The Royal Ballet, The Nutcracker 2023 review ★★★★★

No ballet brings out the child in you like The Nutcracker; and The Royal Ballet’s evergreen production of the Christmas classic has the ability to reawaken that childish sense of pure wonder you’re bound to lose as you grow up.

This production by Sir Peter Wright has been running since the mid-1980s, but looks as fresh as if newly minted, with every element fitting into the whole to create theatrical magic.


Production photo of The Nutcracker, The Royal Ballet ©2022. Photo: Asya Verzhbinsky
Julia Trevelyan Oman’s sumptuous, minutely detailed designs recreate the Biedermeier drawing-room of the well-off Stahlbaum family, whom we join at their Christmas Eve party, and then the elaborate gilded spun-sugar set for the Kingdom of the Sweets, where Act II takes place.

Sir Peter Wright’s narrative is clear even to the youngest ballet-goer and responds perfectly to Tchaikovsky’s miraculous score played live by an in-form Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted on opening night by Andrew Litton.

And when you have a company with the strength in depth of the current Royal Ballet, every last performance brings something extra to the whole.

Anchoring the narrative is the mysterious Herr Drosselmeyer, whose gift of a nutcracker to young Clara is the starting point for the fantastic plot that develops, Clara's dream journey through the Kingdom of the Sweets (was it really a dream?).


Gary Avis as Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker, The Royal Ballet. © 2015 ROH. Photo: Tristram Kenton
This a role that Gary Avis, surely the best dance actor of his generation, has made very much his own, capturing the music with every swirl of his voluminous cape, creating magic you find yourself believing in, and throughout expressing his enduring pain for the nephew he’d thought lost.

In the first of many casts, Clara was danced charmingly by Sae Maeda, with Joseph Sissens as an energetic whirlwind of a Nutcracker.

Among the various divertissements Melissa Hamilton and Lukas B Brændsrød stood out with a slowly sizzling, sensual Arabian Dance so totally attuned to the music I forgot to breathe as I watched.

Mariko Sasaki was an assured, elegant Rose Fairy.

Of course, the climax of the ballet is the Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux, and on opening night it was danced by principals Fumi Kaneko and William Bracewell.


William Bracewell and Fumi Kaneko in The Nutcracker. Photo: ROH
If partnerships can be made in heaven, this one surely was. Kaneko is one of the most engaging dancers in the Royal Ballet, her serene porcelain features belying an iron technique that makes everything look effortless, even this pas de deux’s fiendish choreography. Simultaneously sweet, regal and supremely musical, Kaneko is a dream Sugar Plum Fairy.

William Bracewell looks good as her Prince, and makes up for slightly uninspiring work in his variations with attentive, sympathetic and safe partnering.

Elsewhere the corps de ballet was on good form, making for an atmospheric snow scene; the plentiful complement of party children were impeccably drilled, with Alfie Napolitano totally convincing as Clara’s tiresome little brother Fritz; and the massed ranks of little soldiers and mice produced a spirited battle scene.

Was everything perfect? No, of course not, but the magic of this glorious ballet shone through undimmed and in my view justifies a top star rating.



The Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker is relayed live to cinemas nationwide on Tuesday 12 December at 7:15pm. Encores from Sunday 17 December at 2pm. Click here to find a participating cinema near you.