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Nutcracker review – Wonka meets Mary Poppins in English National Ballet’s reboot | Ballet

December 15, 2024


English National Ballet’s brand new production of The Nutcracker greatly improves on its previous version. It doesn’t come with a gimmick or a sharp reinterpretation, just a sense that artistic director Aaron S Watkin has thought things through – and hired a bang designer, Dick Bird, to make the scene zing.

The setting is Edwardian London, the view of St. Paul’s, the stove going out and the suffragettes (the very Mary Poppins), where the wizard Drosselmeyer has a sweet magazine (very Willy Wonka) and a person pulling all the strings. Preceding the Nutcracker’s most notably unconvincing narrative, Watkins and Arielle Smith put bread in the prologue to the later scenes, and do well to weave some coherence through the acts, with young Clara wishing for a complete, dreamy narrative at the center. his elder self and Prince Nutcracker flying to the Sweet Land in a chariot driven by an icy horse, no less.

The transition from the Christmas party scene (with its quirky chorus that must be Smith’s work) is well handled in the fantasy. Clara appears shocked, Alice-style, as the world of toys expands to life-size. There is a nice injection of surrealism, with dancing gingerbread men and a bomb made of Edam cheese. Some of the projections are also inspired – watch out for the raid of the shadowy rats.

In the second act, instead of the often problematic national dance, we were treated to a parade of global delicacies, including tanghulu (Chinese candied berries), the Egyptian drink sahlab, dressed as a bay of foamy milk, and some very cute. Liquorice Allsorts Rentaro Nakaaki is a station like a woolen, springing Ukrainian poppy seed. Elsewhere there are fewer flares and some pas de deux feel underwhelming – but this act is the climax of a sequence that is always difficult to pace. Nevertheless, there is a sense of celebration.

Watching the second shot, Ken Saruhashi makes a brilliantly eccentric Drosselmeyer; Katja Khaniukova’s hot, burning Clara Miguel Angelus Maidana, her sweetly burning prince; Precious Adams squints like an ice queen in the middle of the Snow Waltz; and Sugar Plum Fairy Sangeun Lee moves into a carefully spun-sugar delicacy. The whole thing feels familiar yet fresh, colorful yet classy, ​​sweet but not sickly. A solid victory.

But London Coliseum to the 12th of Jan



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