Last week, Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, urged western classical companies to avoid Tchaikovsky’s music, “pausing performances of his works until Russia ceases its bloody invasion”. For ballet companies, the plea falls on sympathetic but unresponsive ears: Tchaikovsky’s ballets are rare bankers in uncertain times, and London hosts no less than three major productions of The Nutcracker this month.
On some nights, well over 6,000 seats will tempt people craving its fruit and nut pleasures. Wayne Eagling’s 2010 production for English National Ballet has its young heroine quivering with intimations of adulthood. Eagling introduces a very young Clara (a poised Millicent Honour on opening night) who morphs into an adult ballerina (Julia Conway) as midnight strikes, dreaming herself into adventure and romance.
Elegant and danced with assurance (athletic snowflakes and an entrancing waltz of the flowers), the production delivers a festive treat. The designs by the late Peter Farmer are in elegantly muted tones, especially the receding backdrops for the second act’s puppet theatre.
Emotionally, though, the stakes remain sluggish. Conway doesn’t seem especially engaged with Clara’s journey, but luxuriates in space and speed as the girl imagines maturity, arms describing ample arcs, toes relishing the push to added height. Yet it’s never entirely clear why the masked nutcracker doll (dashing Fernando Carratalá Coloma) periodically transforms into the hot young officer who turned Clara’s head at her family’s party (Francesco Gabriele Frola).
The party scene is slow to catch fire, despite nice detail: the horrid boys who tease the girls, or Jennie Harrington’s granny, sailing gingerly about as if on coasters. Eagling only belatedly breaks out the bravura, notably when James Streeter’s unrepentantly scene-stealing Mouse King takes the stage with florid leaps and flashing ruby eye. The mouse masks – horrid skulls with scabby bits of fur – are worthy of nightmares, and the mice snap their paws like the Jets in West Side Story.
Modern Nutcrackers now come with slightly less racism, notably in the Chinese dance – though ENB’s pigtails and tilting moves still teeter on the edge of discomfort. The production has also, thank goodness, dropped Eagling’s alarmingly pervy Arabian dance. Less conflicted, Ken Saruhashi’s fearless spins are a blast in the Russian number, while Precious Adams brings seamless fluency to the Mirilton’s fluting melody.
Most Nutcrackers keep their star dancers in reserve for the testing final pas de deux. Here, Clara and her hero appear throughout, so the Sugar Plum duet is a full classical workout, the culmination of a long night’s dancing. Conway and Frola impressively strain every sinew for finesse and panache in extra time. Even better are the orchestra under Gavin Sutherland, digging into each luscious flurry and blaring fanfare. Tchaikovsky isn’t leaving London stages anytime soon.
London Coliseum, to January 7; ballet.org.uk
