Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet The Nutcracker has been part of Christmas in Britain since 1934, when Alicia Markova starred in a production staged by Nicholas Sergeyev. “She was brittle and sparkling, like the frosted icing on a Christmas cake,” said the critic PW Manchester, ecstatically. In 1950, Markova performed in a shortened version for London Festival Ballet, the company that went on to become English National Ballet.
Roll forward to today, as English National Ballet unveils its 11th new version of Nutcracker. Its last (2010) was dour and incomprehensible; this rethinking by artistic director Aaron S Watkin and the irrepressible choreographer Arielle Smith has the virtue of joy and the trace of coherence.
Its greatest pleasure is a really magical design by Dick Bird. Set in Edwardian England, it begins with little Clara popping into a Harry Potter-style sweetshop run by Drosselmeyer (Junor Souza), full of glowing sweets. With the help of Paul Pyant’s lighting, Leo Flint’s videos and John Bulleid’s illusions, scene blends gently into scene, whisking us through dancing chimney sweeps and protesting suffragettes to the Stahlbaums’ elegant Christmas party, full of whirling waltzes and head-jutting liveliness.
The start of Clara’s adventure is signalled by the terrifying shadows of rats running down the staircase; she later drives herself to the Kingdom of Sweets in an ice sleigh pulled by a sea horse. The second act is set in a colourful arena of confectionery pavilions under an azure sky, with dances ascribed to sahlab (a frothy Egyptian milk drink), tanghulu (Chinese candied berries) and buttercream roses, with swirls of sugar on their heads and pink-edged tutus.
It’s cleverly thought through and attractively delivered, binding the story into a shiny wrapper. Clara grows from child to adult as her dream begins, and is given a lot of dancing with her Nutcracker prince. The style tends towards the bland, with many lifts and generic turning, but as danced by a smiling Ivana Bueno and a gracious Francesco Gabriele Frola, it has warmth and energy.
Their second act duet somewhat overshadows Emma Hawes’s delicate Sugar Plum Fairy, but the dancing from the various sweets, particularly Erik Woolhouse’s soaring poppyseed roll, is bright. The child chorus of Liquorice Allsorts generates appropriate oohs and aaahs, and the entire production has a generosity that feels truly Christmassy.
At the Royal Opera House, sugar plums have been replaced with darker chocolate and harder centres. In the Linbury, Ben Duke’s Ruination for his own Lost Dog company returns after its 2022 premiere to add mortal thoughts to the celebratory mood. Its starting joke is that, faced with tinselly escapism and “joy, life and hope” upstairs on the main stage, this audience has chosen to spend its evening in a re-examination of the myth of Medea, a mother who murdered her children.
The show takes the form of a trial conducted by Jean Daniel Broussé’s wry and cynical Hades, after Medea pleads her innocence and demands to be reunited with her sons in the afterlife. It’s both bitterly funny – her aberrant husband, Jason (Liam Francis, as loose-limbed and large-eyed as a colt), seduces her and his second wife with the same laid-back dance routine – and emotionally searing.
There’s a scene towards the close when Hannah Shepherd’s powerful Medea tries to swim the River Lethe, lifted through the air by her fellow dancers, scrabbling against imaginary water. The choreography puts resistance against her limbs so that every step seems like agony; she floats upside down as the music and her own despair surge around her. It is staggeringly raw.
The music is part of the experience, ranging from Mack the Knife to Radiohead to Handel, sometimes performed live by a trio of astonishing singers, supposedly singing on their way through hell. The whole piece is an antidote to unthinking celebration, a reminder of the suffering of humanity that shapes Greek myth – and underlies the Christian Christmas story.
All the best narratives have this hint of light snatched from the surrounding blackness. At the beginning of Ruination, when Medea descends into hell, a few notes of Prokofiev’s Cinderella float into the Linbury as if from the performance on the main stage upstairs. It’s a reminder of how much melancholy the composer wove into his own depiction of the fairytale of the impoverished and cruelly treated heroine, who escapes to the ball and finds her prince.
Frederick Ashton’s 1948 masterpiece leans into that sense of sadness. The solos Cinderella dances with a broom for a partner are full of lyrical longing that makes her transformation all the more otherworldly and unexpected.
The Royal Ballet’s current revival is so massively over-designed by Tom Pye and Alexandra Byrne that the bling is sometimes in danger of dazzling. Yet the Royal Ballet’s dancers let Ashton’s tenderness and delicacy shine through. There are assorted intriguing casts in a run that extends into January. I watched Fumi Kaneko’s Cinderella, whose radiance spreads across her face as she enters the ballroom, arms gracefully extended; when she turns circles around William Bracewell’s entranced prince, she seems to weave a spell around him.
Cinderella’s realisation in the final act that their love was not a dream has a homely happiness. The corps de ballet of stars manage to master Ashton’s intricate patterns while sharing a sense of wonder, spreading festive cheer all round.
Star ratings (out of five)
Nutcracker ★★★
Ruination ★★★★★
Cinderella ★★★★
• Nutcracker is at the Coliseum, London, until 12 January 2025
• Ruination is at the Linbury theatre, Royal Opera House, London, until 4 January 2025
• Cinderella is at the Royal Opera House, London, until 16 Januaryy 2025
