Christmas is coming – don’t fight it. And this welcoming new Nutcracker would be a treat at any time, in a snug pop up jazz club tucked at the back of the Royal Festival Hall.It’s a tight fit in the cosy orange space designed by Soutra Gilmour – we sit up close to sweat and sequins. Impressively, the swirling dancers don’t knock anyone’s drinks over. Choreographer-director Drew McOnie wrests the story from its traditional bougie household, but still follows the ballet’s narrative beats: a night-before-Christmas dream which lulls its young hero towards the cusp of adulthood.Young Clive decorates a wonky christmas tree with orange tinsel, but can’t hold his distracted single dad’s attention. He gets his club kid on with the Sugar Plum doll (an enjoyably diva-ish Patricia Zhou), but dad prescribes boy toys so hands him an Action Man. It’s a disappointment – until the toy springs to life in the studly person of Amonik Melaco, who wears bright green braces over khaki and has clearly never neglected arm day.When dolls start dancing it’s fantasy time. The Nutcracker is always a subsumed sexual awakening, implicitly giving its young heroine a glimpse of adult romance around the corner – but McOnie lets the ballet be horny on main. In Dreamland, Clive reappears in a sheeny short cape and shorter shorts. The ballet’s confectionary-inspired novelty dances are here prompted by lurid drinks – kicky lemon, sultry orange (Chanelle Anthony gives great sashay), a tango for two strawberry-clad sauceboxes.Jazz composer Cassie Kinoshi gives the score a sultry, intimate makeover, played by a quartet in pjs. Tchaikovsky’s melancholy melodies respond well to smoky-note saxophone and his sassy rhythms to double bass and drumkit. Costume designer Ryan Dawson Laight has heaps of fun – enviable pyjamas, quilted snow-wear, spangly hotpants – and McOnie’s sprightly sextet of dancers find their curves in spinning, swerving dance.Mark Samaras, a substitute as Clive, is excellently ardent and sinewy. Movingly, his fantasy isn’t only about desire, but community – this confetti-sprinkled crew are the accepting friends who may become Clive’s own queer fam. Clive is pretty sorted – it’s Action Man who must learn to be swoony and silly, ditch the boxy parade ground march for swooshy moves in a ruffled frock. And back home, dad learns to be proud of a son who paints outside the lines.London’s first Nutcracker of the season is not big, but it is clever – cute and compact as a Terry’s chocolate orange.Tuff Nut Jazz Club, Southbank Royal Festival Hall, southbankcentre.co.uk
