English National Ballet: Nutcracker review

Act II is then a feast for the eyes, thanks to Bird’s showstopping design. Field of the Cloth of Gold-inspired tents are the resting spots for the international dancers. The Mirlitons are a group of candy-cane striped ballerinas with paper-cake-case tutus and ruffs; they’re followed by a set of truly tiny (and very well drilled) child dancers kitted out beautifully as Liquorice Allsorts, before Clara and her Nutcracker Prince dance amid a swirl of pink and white buttercream roses. 

Beside all this – what of the actual dancing? Junor Souza leans into the heightened strangeness of Drosselmeyer that Aaron Watkin and Arielle Smith’s choreography calls for, and his twitchily cartoonish grand gesturing adds a disturbing frisson to the Stahlbaum party. 

There’s an awful lot going on – suffragettes, a Fagin-like cheesemonger with a child pickpocket gang, erratic servants, animated Christmas baubles. But Delilah Wiggins as the young Clara cuts a charismatic path through all this, and Ivana Bueno, as the grown-up “dream” Clara, brings a sensuous delight to the role as she’s swept up by Francesco Gabriele Frola’s Nutcracker Prince. This is definitely a Nutcracker that puts Clara front and centre, and Bueno makes for a bubbly, vim-filled heroine. 

She and Frola are so good in their big Act II pas de deux – Frola flinging out showstopper leaps, even amid all the waltzing buttercream roses – that you wonder if they might have just upstaged the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier. Emma Hawes brings stately grace to the grand Sugar Plum pas de deux. It’s just a shame that Aitor Arrieta had an off night, and the big party-piece fish dives were a casualty. 

Never mind – it’s the joy of live performance. And there was more than enough to gorge on, particularly Minju Kang’s liquid moves in the Arabian (now Egyptian Sahlab) dance and Erik Woolhouse’s explosive split jumps in the Russian (now Ukrainian Makivnyk) variation. It all feels like a real Christmas gift.