With its Sugar Plum Fairy and its candy-coated voyage to the Kingdom of the Sweets, The Nutcracker is the pinkest ballet of all. That's why it is the perfect accessory for Barbie this year. Not only is there a whole new ballerina kit for Barbie herself, but her maker, Mattel, is sponsoring English National Ballet's Christmas Nutcracker season, including yesterday's special schools' matinee.
The Coliseum decked itself gamely for the event, winding pink swag around the staircases and the builders' scaffolding, putting up pink floodlights to illuminate the foyer, and making a big feature of pink-spangled decorations and a pink cast list. There was even a real-life, pink-cloaked Barbie holding court in the theatre's royal box.
All this rosy decor could have seemed at odds with the somewhat grim version of The Nutcracker that the company currently dances - Derek Deane's heartless update of 1997. But the casting of Thomas Edur as Drosselmeyer restored a surprising amount of charm to the production as well as to his own role.
When Deane himself used to dance Drosselmeyer, the magician came across as a camp showman with a creepily proprietorial interest in little Clara. Edur couldn't be cheap or vicious if he tried, and with his performance dominating the stage, this Nutcracker almost seems a different ballet. On a basic level, Edur's fine-bred classicism brings an elegance and lustre to Deane's most indifferent passages of choreography, while the princely courtesy of his partnering of Clara not only dispels any whiff of the charlatan in his character but cloaks it with poetry and gravitas.
In Edur's arms - and out of them - a very junior Caroline Duprot dances Clara with a blithe lyricism that manages to be wide-eyed and girlish without looking cute. Between the pair of them we are allowed to believe in an unexpected amount of the plot's magic.
Best of the three other principals is Monica Perego, who dances her Ice Queen cameo with a gracious assurance. Erina Takahashi and Dmitri Gruzdyev are a tad disappointing as the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince. Gruzdyev's manner now looks far more showy than his technique, and while Takahashi is properly dainty as the Fairy, her dancing lacks the play of elasticity and resistance that gives texture and mystery to the best classical dancing. She is very pretty in pink, but there is a clipped delicacy to her dancing that is just a little too close to being doll-like.
· Until January 9. Box office: 020-7632 8300.
