We’re not even in December but Christmas has begun in London it seems, and we’re now expected to jump in the back of the Mariah-blaring rickshaw for the grand attack on our wallets, willing marks for a fleecing, hoping that amidst all the self-indulgence masquerading as generosity, we stumble into a moment of drunken good cheer that doesn’t result in an HR enquiry.
Yet spend a few hours watching Royal Ballet’s The Nutcracker, and it’s impossible not to have your cynicism crack. It is a reminder of what Christmas is really all about: no, not Jesus - this is a féerie, a good hit of pure Pagan whimsy - but gathering, individual display, exquisite spectacle and... well, magic.
This returning production of Sir Peter Wright’s 1984 version of The Nutcracker is one that dazzles you with that magic, in terms of performance and production. Full of on-stage illusions - including a couple that this reporter is still spooked about - it’s like watching a George Méliès extravaganza from the early silent cinema days, with Thomas Whitehead’s Herr Drosselmeyer as a whirling Mephistopheles performing tricks to curry favour with the family whose Christmas Eve party he’s just crashed.
He’s not evil- though his assistant, performed with excellent spiky impishness by Harrison Lee, might be - but he does have an ulterior motive: this toy-maker managed to annoy the Mouse King by making traps to kill half his kind, and who then took revenge by turning Drosselmeyer’s nephew, Hans-Peter, into a Nutcracker doll. Useful but economically a dead end. Drosselmeyer now wants to give this doll to Clara – the daughter of the household – in the belief that she can help defeat the Mouse King and release his nephew.
The first half set largely at the party is a perfectly judged mix of chamber piece sub-plots and stirring disruption, with Clara spellbound by the turn to the magical that her staid formal family gathering has taken; Viola Pantuso brings an individual flair to Clara suggesting a pull to independence alongside a child-like romanticism.
With the party over, Clara sneaks downstairs for a look at her nutcracker, only for Drosselmeyer to spring out from behind a suspiciously massive mechanical owl and, in a bravura moment (slight spoiler coming), elevate the Christmas tree to epic proportions and whisk Clara off to another world to fight the Mouse King and release Hans-Peter (Leo Dixon), from mouthful-of-shell hell.
With this accomplished comes the moments we’ve all been waiting for, with the cornucopia of celebratory dances to Tchaikovsky’s famous sequences, gorgeously conducted by Koen Kessels which restores the familiar tunes to their transcendent heights, free of the Fruit & Nut adverts lodged in your brain. Melissa Hamilton and Nicol Edmonds’ Arabian Dance is particular highlight, a sensual fugue both muscular and fluid, giving Clara a vision of a distant land where pleasures do not revolve around caning servants.
And then comes the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, which does not disappoint. In fact, Fumi Kaneko is nothing short of spectacular, a charismatic tutu bomb pirouetting endlessly in bravura a bravura display that seems as effortless as breathing. William Bracewell’s Prince never seems to touch the ground beside her, and the pair bring the house down with the sheer enjoyment they are taking in breaking every rule of physics.
As we return back down to earth to the real world, it retains the quality of a dream, where Hans-Peter can be reunited with Drosselmeyer and Clara dashes down the street, presumably to plot her escape from her family.
On this opening night, an added sense of occasion in the Royal Opera House came as Sir Peter Wright arrived on stage for the curtain call – it was his 99th birthday. A lovely moment, given a suitably electric reception. And he must have been delighted to see his Nutcracker retaining its legendary status. Not merely an annual check-in to one of the usual shows, but a chance to escape into a world where refinement, courtesy, ritual and elevated forms of humanity are showcased.
Outside on the streets, it’s all drunks and pasties on the train home, the Chrimbo binge underway, but the vision of the past in The Nutcracker does not feel merely nostalgic, more like an reminder of a magic that is still within our reach.
The Nutcracker is at Royal Ballet & Opera until 5 Jan
