The Nutcracker, Royal Ballet review — Fumi Kaneko sets the seasonal bar high

Face it: there is no keeping up with the Stahlbaums. Their tree is taller, their cake is bigger, they hire acrobats and a magician and, backstage, ready for the second-act after-party, a Fairy is waiting (and waiting). The Nutcracker’s ballerina may spend act one in her dressing room while the Stahlbaums’ guests do their Grossvater dance and the mice and toy soldiers do battle in the drawing room, but her party piece is always worth the wait: a sublime synthesis of Tchaikovsky’s music and Lev Ivanov’s crystalline choreography. Your very toes and fingertips twitch in sympathy.

The Royal Ballet, whose 28-performance run of The Nutcracker opened on Wednesday evening, is scheduled to field 14 Sugar Plums this season. The Varna gold medallist Fumi Kaneko set the bar chasteningly high, partnered by an elegant and attentive William Bracewell. Kaneko and her conductor Andrew Litton could maybe risk a little more rubato in the entrée to the grand pas de deux but her solos were unfailingly musical, pirouettes unravelling into razor-sharp attitudes in unwavering synchronicity with Tchaikovsky’s score. Kaneko, whose early career progression was twice slowed down by serious injury, is having a tremendous season with a Manon debut and a reprise of her remarkable Odette/Odile scheduled for the new year.

The Sugar Plum Fairy is guaranteed top billing but in Peter Wright’s Nutcracker it is little Clara Stahlbaum who gets the lion’s share of both dance and drama. Exasperated by the disconnect between reality and fantasy in the original 1892 scenario, Wright knits the two worlds together by giving his teenage heroine much more to do (and dance) in the Kingdom of the Sweets. Since his major revisions of 1999 the role has required a tricky mix of ingénue manners and ballerina technique and Sae Maeda, Wednesday’s Clara, has both. Maeda, who will also be dancing a couple of Rose Fairies this Christmas, was smoothly and expressively partnered by Joseph Sissens as the Nutcracker/Nephew.

The crystalline snowflake ensemble was a little slushy in places but there was a star turn for Mariko Sasaki’s Rose Fairy and feather-footed solos from Leo Dixon, Joonhyuk Jun and Giacomo Rovero in both acts. Norwegian soloist Lukas B Brændsrød, with his long, muscular lines and unsparing attack, was instantly recognisable even in full Mouse King drag. He returned after the interval in a thrilling Danse Arabe, holding sinuous Melissa Hamilton aloft in a dauntless overhead lift. Only a short scene but definitely a partnership to watch (and rewatch).

Wright’s scenario gains focus from his emphasis on Drosselmeyer whose fears for his long-lost nephew, cruelly transformed into a novelty gadget by the evil rodent, top and tail the narrative. Gary Avis’s reading is more powerful than ever, growing from an upmarket party planner to become the emotional anchor of the story. Returning home, exhausted after stage-managing the pleasures of others, he finally gets the best present of all.

★★★★★

To January 13 and in cinemas from December 12, roh.org.uk