United Kingdom Scottish Ballet’s The Nutcracker: Dancers of Scottish Ballet, Scottish Ballet Orchestra / Daniel Parkinson (conductor). Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 8.1.2025. (SRT)
Production:
Music – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Original Choreography – Peter Darrell
Reimagined Choreography and Direction – Christopher Hampson
Set and Costume design – Lez Brotherston
Lighting designer – George Thomson
Cast included:
The Nutcracker Prince – Nicol Edmonds
The Sugar Plum Fairy – Marge Hendrick
The Snow Queen – Gina Scott
Drosselmeyer – Melissa Polson
Clara – Esme Noronha
A busy December schedule, combined with the fact that one of Edinburgh’s principal theatres is currently closed for renovation, means that Scottish Ballet’s The Nutcracker has not arrived in the capital until well after Christmas. It tastes as sweet in January as it ever did in December, though, and I might even have enjoyed it all the more because the trappings of the festive season have pretty much disappeared from the world outside.
Every ballet company needs a Nutcracker. This one has been in Scottish Ballet’s repertoire for 52 years now, having been created by the company’s founder, Peter Darrell. It has lasted because it is so lovely to look at, but also because it has always been open to being refreshed. Its last iteration (review here) grabbed the headlines because it had begun to look at rethinking the second act’s national dances. Christopher Hampson, the company’s current Artistic Director who reimagined this Nutcracker back in 2014, pushed that process on slightly this year by visualising them as a series of different sweet treats (rather like English National Ballet’s new production recently seen on Sky Arts). However, the Act II divertissement wisely avoids anything too attention-grabbing and is most appealing because each ‘sweet’ gets a distinctive colour palette: bluish green for the Chinese, whirling red for the Spanish, waving mauve for the mirlitons.
This isn’t a Nutcracker to frighten the horses, therefore, but nor should it be. With the honourable exception of Matthew Bourne’s (review here), I have never seen a Nutcracker that has successfully set the piece outside the realm of fairytale and magic, and this one might have leapt straight out of a storybook with its gorgeous nineteenth century costumes and opulent sets. The transition from the living room to the snowy pine forest is still a marvellous catch-your-breath moment, and the direction of the dancers in the company scenes works as well for the narrative as for the aesthetics, notably during an admirably clear battle scene. Only the Waltz of the Flowers feels like it could do with more visual focus in Act II. Coming after such a multicoloured set of character dances, eight dancers dressed in dark sparkles doesn’t quite cut the mustard.
The principals in this revival are all really strong, though. Young Esme Noronha makes a winsome Clara, her face wide-eyed with delight during the entertainments of Act II. Nicol Edmonds’s Prince moves with muscular energy, complementing the delicacy of Marge Hendrick’s Sugar Plum Fairy: their great pas de deux is a showcase in slowly unfolding grace as they both support and spur on one another. As the Snow Queen at the end of Act I, Gina Scott moves with fluid suppleness, though her duet with the Prince was the only part of the evening where the movements on the stage felt slightly disconnected from the music in the pit.
That music was wonderfully done, however. Scottish Ballet’s orchestra could doubtless do it in their sleep, but there was nothing routine about the lush beauty of their playing, and conductor Daniel Parkinson paced Tchaikovsky’s wonderful score with just the right level of understanding, building up expertly to the big climaxes, most notably the transformation of the Nutcracker into the Prince. Only the entry into the pine forest plodded a little. In every other sense this was a showpiece reading of the music, supporting a staging that doubtless has several more decades of life in it.
Simon Thompson