Velvet Snow

Christmas season is definitely upon London, with decorative lights on the streets, people rushing to buy presents, chilly mornings and, ballet-wise, the possibility of finishing off the day with The Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker now in its 25th season.

Sir Peter Wright’s staging sticks to the original Hoffmann story where Drosselmeyer’s nephew Hans-Peter has been cursed and turned into a Nutcracker doll by the revengeful Mouse King. The spell can only be broken if he defeats the royal rodent while also capturing a young girl’s heart. Drosselmeyer sees in the Stahlbaum’s daughter Clara the potential to be just that girl. Given the heartwarming plot this Nutcracker could easily slip up into kid-friendly Disney territory but, thanks to the dark German Romantic undertones, it also scores with grown ups.

Clara and Drosselmeyer in The Royal Ballet's Nutcracker. Photo: Dee Conway / ROH ©

Act I takes place at the Stahlbaum home where guests and family are gathered for a Christmas party. Drosselmeyer (a spot-on Will Tuckett) arrives with his deep turquoise cape, gadgets and plenty of magic tricks including giant dancing dolls and the gift of a Nutcracker doll for Clara. Blink and you will miss lovely details such as Gary Avis‘s very funny rheumatic Captain trying to prove “he’s still got it” in the elders dance and the Marzipan cake which will become the sugar-coated stage for the Act II divertissements. The only letdown here is Drosselmeyer’s mending of the Nutcracker doll after it is broken by Clara’s brother as he seems to repair it manually instead of magically as one would expect.

In her debut as Clara, Leanne Cope captures all the freshness of a teenager and her wonder at the supernatural events which unfold before her eyes. Her dancing too was charming despite a couple of early mishaps, presumably due to a slippery floor at the Stahlbaum home. Paul Kay showed beautiful lines and crisp dancing as Hans-Peter, with plenty of energy in the battle with the Mouse King.

In Act II the Stahlbaum home and the Land of Snow give way to the Land of Sweets (Comfiturembourg). Here the often disconnected sequence of divertissements is cleverly linked to the story with the full participation of Clara and Hans-Peter and a mime scene where they explain their battle with the Mouse King to their hosts Prince Coqueluche and The Sugar Plum Fairy (Steven McRae and Roberta Marquez).

Steven McRae as The Prince in The Nutcracker. Photo: Johan Persson / ROH ©

Steven has been filled with praise on opening night and deservedly so. Not only does he ace his variation, he also shows regal poise and gentlemanlike manners, taking a step back to let his ballerina shine. Roberta Marquez only keeps getting better (the McRae effect?). Her Sugar Plum Fairy is lovely and even if the tricky gargouillades do not yet fully come through she compensates with phrasing, accentuating gestures such as her delight at meeting her partner, full of rapport with McRae in the pas de deux. Here, both Roberta and Steven give us more than is arguably needed from a short role that calls for no more than solid technique and a beautiful display of line, where all the emotional punch is already contained in Tchaikovsky’s score. Elsewhere, Yuhui Choe was the most beautiful Rose Fairy and her escorts, led by Brian Maloney and Johannes Stepanek were flawless, the Russian dance with Ludovic Ondiviela and Kevin Emerton another highlight.

The closing sequence has Clara back in the real world wondering whether it was all just a dream. Soon a chance meeting with Hans-Peter on the street where she lives suggests quite the contrary. And while the final reunion between Drosselmeyer and Hans-Peter might bring a tear to one’s eye, once the curtain is down over wintry Nuremberg the audience is all smiles. Let Herr Drosselmeyer keep fulfilling his purpose for many years to come.

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True Adventures

King Rat in Birmingham Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker. Photo: Bill Cooper / BRB ©

With its year in, year out clockwork precision, The Nutcracker is a balletic dish to be sampled sparingly. Too many Spanish chocolates, Sugar Plums and Candy Canes and up go your cholesterol levels. Too few and you might be the only one missing out on the best of the season’s treats. For that reason you’d better choose productions wisely. Preferably – and your arteries will thank you for this – you’d try something that delivers the goods while leaving aside the “OTT” sickly sweeties, such as Sir Peter Wright’s staging for The Birmingham Royal Ballet.

If we’ve all seen The Nut so many times why do we keep returning in the first place? Throughout the years the ballet has left its personal imprint on us, just like an old friend. We might think of the days when we would put on our prettiest dresses, like so many little girls still do, and look up to brave Clara. Her courage to turn her nightmare into dreams, defeating the mouse king (or, in this version, King Rat) to save her Nutcracker prince with bonus reward of a journey to a magical sugary land has given us much to consider about girl power.

Jenna Roberts as The Snow Fairy in The Birmingham Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker. Photo: Roy Smiljanic / BRB ©

With a firm focus on our Clara and her coming-of-age tale, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s  production had the children around us enthralled, gasping, applauding and rooting for our heroine and her Nutcracker prince. In this staging Clara is a ballet student and her mother an elegant former ballerina whose exquisite red dress is a dead giveaway for designer John Macfarlane’s source of inspiration: très chic Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. Before her godfather Drosselmeyer shows up with the Nutcracker, Clara’s first Christmas gift is a ballerina doll which will later become the Sugar Plum Fairy and dance the Grand pas de deux with the Nutcracker Prince. In this way the Sugar Plum is a sort of dreamlike projection of what the grown-up Clara might one day become.

On Saturday matinée the role of Clara was danced by soloist Momoko Hirata, with young whiz kid Joseph Caley as her Nutcracker Prince. Both Momoko and Joseph have the advantage of looking very young which, on top of their dramatic skills, help make their characterisations all the more convincing. Momoko’s soft arms and graceful steps shape a young girl with her ballerina  dreams who blushes when close to her young suitor.  From his first dance with Clara Joseph displays his clean technique and princely lines foreshadowing his later appearance as Cavalier to the Sugar Plum Fairy – the very charming Ambra Vallo. He is a most attentive partner with a smile that could melt many a young maiden’s heart. Mothers beware.

Anniek Soobroy with Artists of Birmingham Royal Ballet in The Nutcracker. Photo: Bill Cooper / BRB ©

Elsewhere in the ballet both of Tchaikovsky’s gorgeous waltzes, for Snowflakes and Flowers, showcase the company’s great energy and style, making this Nutcracker come alive in a way that the Spanish, Arabian and Chinese divertissements cannot quite match up to. Besides the lovely duo of Caley and Vallo, these are my own favorite moments, but I suspect that for kids the deal clincher might be entirely different: between the giant Christmas tree, the mice that scurry from a glowing fireplace to thunderous applause and Clara’s flight on the back of a snow goose, the youngsters are spoiled with three Christmas miracles wrapped in one beautiful Victorian package.

The Nutcracker is in repertoire at the Birmingham Hippodrome from November 27 to December 13. For booking details visit The Birmingham Hippodrome’s website.

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