United Kingdom Backstage with English National Ballet (Sky Arts, series directed by Zoë Dobson) & English National Ballet’s Nutcracker (directed for TV by Peter Jones): English National Ballet, English National Ballet Philharmonic / Maria Seletskaja (conductor). Filmed at the London Coliseum and first broadcast on Sky Arts on 23.12.2024. (JPr)
Last time we watched English National Ballet backstage was in 2011 with Agony & Ecstasy: A Year with English National Ballet. Those were the days when the antics of belittling taskmaster choreographer Derek Deane made anything which may or may not have happened on Strictly Come Dancing in 2023 seem mild by comparison. Deane was reviving his famous 1997 in-the-round Swan Lake (review here) which was shown on BBC Two on Christmas Eve. These days, thankfully, it seems things are much more collegiate and the closest we ever saw to a tantrum on camera from ENB’s artistic director Aaron S Watkin (who used to dance with the company) was when some of the dancers were not paying attention to him. After working through a love duet Watkin even went out of the way to suggest the two dancers could kiss only if it was consensual.
On screen for the first of the two Backstage programmes shown recently on Sky Arts we could read how ‘Once in a decade English National Ballet creates a new Nutcracker … This is the year’. Wayne Eagling’s previous production had lasted from 2010 until this year and probably outstayed its welcome but not as much as Sir Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker for The Royal Ballet has. It has been staged there most Christmases since 1984! Every Nutcracker seems to have problems in making sense of the story and on first viewing I am not certain Watkin and co-choreographer Arielle Smith have had any more success than most.
Watkin reminded us how ENB ‘are competing with West End shows. We have to be on the same level because otherwise ballet’s longevity will be at stake.’ This is something The Royal Ballet ignore with their version which is approaching its 60th year. Smith was described as a ‘huge talent’ who has choreographed for different genres including West End musicals and operas. Her view was that ‘You are doing a bit of a balancing act because you’re trying to deliver the expectation of what people know Nutcracker to be, but I think it’s really important that we just decide making a new production by starting afresh. What’s different in our version is that rather than Clara feeling a bit of a bystander she’s front and centre.’
Over the two programmes there was lots that was fascinating, mainly how through all the (mostly) constructive chaos it actually gets to open at the London Coliseum. We hear about how Watkin paired for the first night ‘the experience of an older partner [Francesco Gabriele Frola] and a younger up and coming dancer [Ivana Bueno] and just feeling that chemistry’. Designer Dick Bird revealed that the ballet required ‘between three and four hundred costumes’ and these are frequently colourful, sometimes quirky or sparkling. Bird revealed he does his ‘earliest work in restaurants’ with only his sketch book. Costume maker Orla Convey revealed how ‘every tutu maker has their own footprint … you’d probably be able to tell who made them just by looking on the inside’. Bird was inspired by the paintings of John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-93) which he considered ‘so beautiful and evocative of light in the evening in the rain’. ENB’s new music director Maria Seletskaja (who is a former dancer) bemoaned the repeats of Tchaikovsky’s music for the ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ and said her job was ‘to find a way to make it appealing and bring you goosebumps of joy and not goosebumps of “God, I’ve heard it!” … The general idea is to take tempi back to the original quicker tempi as we think it was played when the premiere happened in St Petersburg.’ By the full company’s technical rehearsal two weeks before the opening night, a first act gingerbread was bumping into a wall and King Rat couldn’t see out of his mask as Arielle Smith claimed ‘It was a bit of a circus!’
The front drop for the opening of Nutcracker is an advert for C. Z. Drosselmeyer & Co’s Emporium of Sweets and Delights with shops in Nuremberg, London and St Petersburg! There is a prologue with Drosselmeyer and two gargoyle-headed assistants (who reappear throughout the ballet) doing something in a couple of places in his candy shop to create versions of the Cavalier (aka Prince) we will later see in Act II and then a Nutcracker doll. We then enter a snowy Edwardian street scene with St Paul’s in the distance which is straight out of Mary Poppins and with two prancing chimney sweeps to emphasise this. Drosselmeyer’s shop is on one side and that of Grimsewer (exclaiming ‘all types of cheese bought and sold) on the other. When Grimsewer briefly appears he is Fagin with a tail! Two suffragettes enter the fray demanding ‘Votes for Women’ but rapidly we are off to the Stalbaum’s parlour for the familiar Christmas party.
It is clear how Watkin and Smith resist anyone standing still for any length of time and the mix of purely classical steps, physical jerks, angular groupings of dancers, leaps and spins begins. There are two comedy servants dishing out sweet treats, grandfather and grandmother do their usual dance, and enthusiastic children (sugar) rush around. I get no idea who Drosselmeyer (Junor Souza) actually is, he is a Willy Wonka-ish confectioner but also a magician, hypnotist and owns a toy theatre. Admittedly how he repairs Clara’s broken Nutcracker doll is indeed ‘magical’. Soon it was time for everyone to go home and Clara falls asleep. Eventually we realise how in Clara’s dream Dr Stahlbaum will be the Cavalier and his wife, the Sugar Plum Fairy, with most of the party guests also seen in the divertissements. Drosselmeyer and the adolescent Clara get a duet before he disappears from the ballet until its very end. There is video of encroaching rats and books flying off shelves and an explosion of gaudy video effects but the scene transformation as the tree should grow and grow is botched – it is 2024 after all – and it needs more than a painted cloth hanging at the top of the stage.
It is okay to put Clara ‘front and centre’ but it is not right to have her kill King Rat with a sword after a confused battle, what is that telling young children? From then on things improve immeasurably in a surfeit of dry ice and against a starry backdrop as Clara and – the now-human – Nutcracker Prince get a romantic duet as if Watkin (I assume?) was wishing it was Romeo and Juliet and not Nutcracker. Soon we are in the Ice Realm presided over by Anna Nevzorova’s imperious Ice Queen as icicles hang down throughout the stage and snow falls. Clara and the Nutcracker Prince travel to the ‘Land of Sweets & Delights’ in a representation (I guess?) of an ice sculpture of a sleigh pulled by a sea horse! At the start of Act II we see them travelling over forests and mountains covered in snow, through some fluffy pink clouds (candy floss?) before they duet (again!) and then meet the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier. Together Clara and her Prince recount their earlier adventures.
Gone are the ballet’s identifiable – and somewhat controversial – national dances with each sequence now based on a traditional sweet from different countries. These are housed in an array of Arabian style tents with that for Sugar Plum at their centre. There is Spanish turrón, Egyptian sahlab, Chinese tanghulu, Ukrainian poppy seed rolls (makivnyk), German marzipan flutes, and last but not least, Ballet’s Liquorice Allsorts with young children dressed as the liquorice selection we all recognise and led by a bounding Bertie Bassett (Rentaro Nakaaki). It was now time for the ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ now named ‘Dance of the Marzipans’ when Clara (who has been almost ever-present so far) and her Prince get a pas de deux we can instantly recognise including grand jetés and fouettés. The problem was that this comes immediately before the Nutcracker pas de deux with its ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ which should actually be the climax – the icing on the cake! – of the dancing we see. Unfortunately, the impeccable virtuosity, artistry and technique of Ivana Bueno (Clara) and Francesco Gabriele Frola (Nutcracker Prince) overshadowed the, for me, very disappointing Emma Hawes (Sugar Plum Fairy) and Aitor Arrieta (Sugar Plum Cavalier). At the end of the ballet the adolescent Clara is presented with an ornate sparkling necklace by the Sugar Plum Fairy which Clara as a child wakes up wearing.
As for the music heard through the TV speakers, it sounded as well played as you might expect from Seletskaja and the English National Ballet Philharmonic. It did seem to be faster than usual and matched all the hyperactive choreography we had seen.
Not perhaps the overwhelming success the ENB wanted but they have the months ahead to reflect on it all and I am sure there will be changes by next Christmas which should improve this Nutcracker.
Jim Pritchard
For more about English National Ballet click here.
Featured Image: Anna Nevzorova (Ice Queen) and English National Ballet dancers © Johan Persson
Creatives:
Music – Pyotyr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreography and Concept – Aaron S. Watkin and Arielle Smith
Set and Costume design, Concept – Dick Bird
Lighting design – Paul Pyant
Video design – Leo Flint
Illusion designer and Direction – John Bulleid
Cast included:
Clara (child) – Delilah Wiggins
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
Isolde / Ice Queen – Anna Nevzorova
Grimsewer / Rat King – James Streeter
Other roles – English National Ballet and Guest Artists, English National Ballet School
Children – English National Ballet’s Ballet Futures programme and Adagio School of Dance
You missed the fact that the conductor said she ‘hates’ any previous rendition of this glorious work! Hate? What? Don’t we love and cherish a score such as this. I had seen this ENB Nutcracker live in Southampton a few weeks previous (with very mixed feelings generally) but was so excited that the orchestral conductor had also once been a professional ballet dancer. But instead when interviewed in this documentary she was intent on just speeding everything up – which lost the beauty of the pieces and the dancers were saying how much they were struggling with the sheer speed of everything. What? When the conductor was interviewed she was telling us how to suck eggs, she was very negative and womansplaining music to us. I did not like her character. Where is the joy and the magic and the sense of privilege? When I sat there all I wanted to do was run to the Royal Opera House for the classic magnificent beauty of The Royal Ballet’s production.