Nutcracker, English National Ballet, Coliseum review - Tchaikovsky and his sweet tooth rule supreme

No new production of a beloved old ballet can please everyone, and there is none more beloved, or more frequently produced, than The Nutcracker. English National Ballet has staked its identity on performing Tchaikovsky’s last, most hummable and most festive ballet every Christmas since 1950, turning out a fresh reading every few years.

This is quite feasible given that so little of the original 1892 production remains (the two pas de deux, the plot outline and the music, basically), leaving everything else up for grabs – a gift for designers and choreographers. The constant is Tchaikovsky’s music: the appeal of its melodic invention and inspired orchestration is evergreen.

All praise then to the ENB Philharmonic and its dynamic new musical director, Maria Seletskaja, who began her career as a ballet dancer in Estonia before migrating to the podium. That rare dual experience could account for the many felicitous musical choices in this new production – in particular, tempi that feel comfortable both for instruments and dancers and are largely more ample and relaxed. For while it’s true that the composer left no instructions as to how fast or slow each of the numbers in Nutcracker should go, developments in ballet technique over the past 130 years have left dancers jumping higher and covering greater distance which inevitably demands more time. Listeners, too, benefit from the chance to appreciate the complexities of Tchaikovsky’s effects: novel treatments of familiar instruments, and fabulous introductions, such as the celesta for Sugar Plum’s music. He  also goes big on the flautist’s technique of flutter tonguing – the closest musical equivalent to shivers running up and down your spine.

Choreographic credits for this production are shared between Aaron S Watkin – artistic director at ENB since the departure of Tamara Rojo last year – and Arielle Smith, a fast-rising talent who seems scarcely to have paused for breath since graduating from the Rambert School. As we are not told which of them was responsible for which bits, it’s fair to assume there was some crossover and collaboration. Whatever the case, there is fun to be had in both halves of the ballet, especially in the marshalling of small children, traditionally limited to polite skipping and curtsies in the party of Act I. In this Nutcracker they pop up everywhere – as a bunch of ragamuffin pickpockets in an Edwardian street scene (the Oliver Twist allusion is out by 60 years but never mind), as baby mice in the battle and briefly as gingerbread tree decorations. Most delicious of all is their appearance as Liquorice Allsorts in the Land of Sweets, their diminutive size and dumpy circular costumes contrasting cleverly with the elasticity and tremendous reach of tall ENB Soloist Rentaro Nakaaki, who seems to be channeling a liquorice shoelace.

It's in the storytelling that this Nutcracker falls short. It follows the now usual formula of having the grownups in Act I reappear, transformed, in Clara's dream world in Act II – the unpleasant owner of the cheese shop turns into King Rat; the parents are idealised to become Sugar Plum and her cavalier – but the continuity is not sufficiently flagged up to make a dramatic point. More disappointingly, this production fails to address the narrative problem posed by the opening of ETA Hoffmann’s original story, in which the toymaker Drosselmeyer performs some benign sorcery on a doll for complicated personal reasons. Here that muddle is simply replaced by another. I hadn’t a clue what was going on while the overture played. We’re shown Drosselmeyer in his workshop performing some kind of voodoo with what looks like an Action Man and a painted Nutcracker, but why? It’s also never clear whether this Drosselmeyer – who also owns a sweet shop manned by elderly gents with weird pointy ears – is meant to be nasty or nice. Junor Souza, the toymaker in the cast I saw, leapt about impressively, conjuring exuberant video magic from the walls (video design Leo Flint), but his relationship to Clara is a blank.

If Nutcracker is about anything, it’s the innocence of childhood and the loss of it. Yet in this telling Clara in her younger version has already lost it. She throws a wobbly in Drosselmeyer’s sweet shop, she fights with boys and delivers a mocking imitation of Drosselmeyer’s puppets as if auditioning for a talent show. The adolescent Clara is more knowing still, with a giddy enthusiasm for young men in uniform. This feels very much at odds with the earnest, heart-wrenching swell of Tchaikovsky’s music for the Act I pas de deux. As the Nutcracker Prince Francesco Gabriele Frola had polish, impeccable manners and terrific jumps, yet at no point did I believe that Ivana Bueno's Clara's heart was truly stirred by him. 

Things perk up when,an extravagantly icicled snow scene (pictured above), set and costume designer Dick Bird hits his stride. In the Land of Sweets the great visual ideas just keep coming, inspired by some interesting edibles, among them Ukrainian makicvnyk (a swirly poppyseed roll) and German Marzipan-Zweibelflöten (pictured top) –perhaps they just loved the name. The formerly problematic "Chinese dance" is transformed into a men's duet promoting tanghulu, or Chinese candied hawthorn berries, represented by cannonball-size red spheres, comically tricky to handle. "Arabian" is reborn as a paean to sahlab, the Egyptian hot drink made from orchid root milk, embodied so slinkily by dancer Minju Kang that you could almost feel it slipping down your throat. It was a nice idea, too, to extend the flower waltz to include more athletic action for Clara and the Prince. I couldn't have enough of his jumps. 

With a few adjustments, this is a Nutcracker that will earn its keep for ENB for a good while. Some lovely old  features have been excised - why change the grand and wonderful choreography of the final pas de deux? – but there are gains elsewhere.

• Nutcracker at the London Coliseum to 12 January
• more dance reviews on theartsdesk