United Kingdom English National Ballet’s Nutcracker: English National Ballet, English National Ballet Philharmonic / Maria Seletskaja (conductor), London Coliseum, 12.12.2024. (JO’D)
Creatives:
Music – Pyotyr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreography and Concept – Aaron S. Watkin and Arielle Smith
Set and Costume design – Dick Bird
Lighting design – Paul Pyant
Video design – Leo Flint
Illusion designer and Direction – John Bulleid
Cast included:
Clara (adolescent) – Ivana Bueno
Drosselmeyer – Junor Souza
Nutcracker Doll – Rhys Antoni Yeomans
Nutcracker Prince – Francesco Gabriele Frola
Sugar Plum Fairy / Mrs Stahlbaum – Emma Hawes
Sugar Plum Cavalier / Dr Stahlbaum – Aitor Arrieta
Artists of the Company, Students of English National Ballet School and Central School of Ballet, Guest Artists
English National Ballet’s new Nutcracker follows the overall shape of its predecessor: a Christmas party at the Stahlbaum’s house in Act I; Clara’s dream in Act II. But while Wayne Eagling and Toer van Schayk’s ‘darker’ version of 2010 looked back to Frederick Ashton and the Ballets Russes, this production (despite its Edwardian setting) is very much of the digital ‘now’. Video effects and scrims frequently turn the stage into a screen like that of a phone or tablet.
In the programme notes, ENB’s Artistic Director, Aaron S. Watkin, states that he and his co-choreographer, Arielle Smith, wanted to create a Nutcracker ‘that has its place in theatre, not just in ballet’. Much of the Prologue and Act I resembles a musical, or the work of Matthew Bourne, for whom Arielle Smith (with a background in theatre and contemporary dance) has been an Associate Choreographer. The movement style is jerky, loose, focusing on shoulders, elbows and hips.
The party, too, is given a ‘modern’ twist: sassy children, a same-sex couple among the dancers; a Grandmother and Grandfather who can’t keep their hands off each other. It is Clara and her brother, Freddie, rather than a group of boys, who interrupt the games by blowing toy trumpets. The choreographers aim to make this Clara a signifying presence in the discourse that surrounds her. It is she, not the Nutcracker, who will later kill the Rat King with a sword.
Aaron S. Watkin is responsible for the ‘bigger ballet scenes’. Like all the other dance, these are taken at almost breakneck speed. Along with the choreographers, Maria Seletskaja, conducting English National Ballet Philharmonic, is working towards what she believes to be the ‘original tempi’ of Tchaikovsky’s score. At times, the dances even overlap. Adolescent Clara (Ivana Bueno) and her Nutcracker Prince (Francesco Gabriele Frola) interweave their pas de deux with the Waltz of the Buttercream Roses.
The production seems consciously to avoid any moment of stillness, anything that could be accused of being slow or serious. Instead of sitting down to watch the Act II divertissements that are being performed for her entertainment, Clara walks about among the dancers as she expresses pleasure and wonder. Not until the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (Emma Hawes) and her Cavalier (Aitor Arrieta) does she take a seat at the back of the stage.
The audience at the opening night in London were enthusiastic in their applause. The dancers of English National Ballet, including Rhys Antoni Yeomans as the Nutcracker Doll and Erik Woolhouse in the divertissements, do not disappoint. From the drop curtain (which is also a scrim) onwards, designer Dick Bird creates a bright, shiny, colourful world of enchanting detail: a London street and its market stalls; a seahorse-driven sledge made of ice, a giant box of turrón (out of which step the dancers of the ‘Spanish’ dance); tutu skirts that look like inverted cupcake cases.
Perhaps it was only for this reviewer that the use of so much video projection, the almost uniform speed of the music, the constant smiles of the dancers and a certain hardness about their costumes led to an experience as ‘flat’, somehow, as the screen of the mobile or tablet to which this production as a whole seems to aspire.
John O’Dwyer