Peter Wright’s superlative production of The Nutcracker has returned to Birmingham Royal Ballet's repertory for Christmas, a production he created for the company in 1990 and to my mind superior to any other presented in the UK today. Magic, the awesomeness of the Tchaikovsky score, are realised upon the stage and shown in its dances with a childlike sense of fantasy. The Christmas tree rises, the rats play, the snow-goose flies - and the audience gasps.
John F Macfarlane’s designs begin with the rich ochre-red colours of the Stahlbaums’ interior (silk-lined walls, velvet curtains) and its warmth invites the audience in – here is a Christmas party to which you long to be invited. In past year Birmingham Royal Ballet has provided a Stahlbaum family who ground the otherwise superfluous action and thereby enhance the second act; Marion Tait as Clara’s mother, Alan Dubreuil as her father, Michael O’Hare as Drosselmeyer, have each, in previous seasons, given performances of dramatic clarity.
At yesterday's matinee performance the company showed much younger dancers who have clearly learned from their elders. Samara Downs had the hauteur and mahogany elegance of Mrs Stahlbaum, together with the necessary maternal charm; Wolfgang Stollwitzer was an elegant Councillor Stahlbaum to whom, in the event of a group mazurka, you would happily offer your daughter’s arm. I was less taken with Rory Mackay’s Drosselmeyer, from whom your daughter’s arm might well be withdrawn, who could manage all the conjuring tricks, but did so without the mercurial wit that others have previously offered. His assistant (Aaron Robinson) was ultimately more fascinating.
Clara was danced by Momoko Hirata, a dancer within the company who seems sometimes neglected, but who has a bright radiance to her manner and pin-perfect feet, coupled with a softness in her upper body and beautifully billowing arms that betrayed this teenaged girl’s burgeoning desires.
As her Nutcracker Prince (who later doubles as the Sugar Plum’s cavalier) Joseph Caley offered dance security and an ardent manner. Over the last few years his performances have blossomed into those of a true danseur, noble in his bearing and princely in his stage-presence. His turns were crisp and neat, his landings soft and elegant, and he knows exactly how to present a ballerina so as to show her at her finest.
In the grand pas de Deux the Sugar Plum Fairy was Ambra Vallo, whose feet - indeed her entire lower body - were exquisite in the neat terre-à-terre work that the Ivanov choreography entails (though she chickened out of the fiendishly difficult gargouillades in her famous solo celesta variation). But the score evokes a grandeur and a regal authority that Vallo did not quite accomplish.
Still, these niggles hardly registered with an audience comprised of children and their minders, for whom this production is a transportation to another, fantastical, pre-Christmas world. Its magic, the fabulous variety of its stage effects (and there are no stage effects anywhere else that can beat it), the array of its dancing, they all bewitch as they have ever done, and make this the Nutcracker of choice.
Birmingham Royal Ballet performs The Nutcracker at the Hippodrome till 13 December.
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