Birmingham Royal Ballet charm and delight in this exquisite production.

This festive season saw Birmingham Royal Ballet return to the Royal Albert Hall for David Bintley’s enchanting production of The Nutcracker. Choreographed by Peter Wright, Lev Ivanov and Vincent Redmon, with Paul Murphy conducting the Royal Ballet Sinfonia’s masterful execution of Tchaikovsky’s score, The Nutcracker is a treat not to be missed.

Foregrounding this production is a glorious sense of playfulness, with bright, light-footed dancing, sumptuous flowing costumes, and a welcome input from the Royal Ballet Junior Associates as the young children at Drosselmeyer (Rory Mackay)’s party. Often consigned to the sidelines in productions of the Nutcracker while the adults take centre stage, the performance allowed for a wonderful showcase of their work, injecting moments of humour as they flexed their acting chops to boot. One can only imagine the delight of the young talent to hold their own in such a magnificent program.

Drosselmeyer’s magic is realised with nimble elements of physical theatre, his magician’s scarves and fiendish stage trickery demonstrating a seamless sleight-of-hand from the dancers and production team. Emerging from celestially emblazoned trick boxes, the stylised ballet of Riku Ito’s Harlequin and Rachelle Pizzilo’s Columbine is a highlight in this segment. The Nutcracker’s renowned range of personalities is reflected by John Macfarlane’s costumes in astounding contrast and detail, with Max Maslen’s Jack-In-The-Box flaunting possibly the most exquisite piece of character costumery I’ve seen.

This is a bold statement in the context of this production, with the tutus of the performers of the Dance of the Mirlitons (also known as the Dance of the Reed-Flutes, or simply Marzipan) seeming good enough to eat, and Clara (an exceptional Karla Doorbar)’s gossamer-soft nightgown presenting further strong competition. I’ve always wanted to wear one just like it, ideally while drifting to sleep on multitudinous, fluffy cake-layers of eiderdown and satin, blissfully ignorant of any stray peas hidden under the bedding. I’m getting carried away, but The Nutcracker really does quite magically reawaken the imagination of childhood – you’ll be hard pressed to see a fairy tale come quite so spectacularly to life on stage.

I initially baulked at the projections, the first of which felt more Doctor Who than Tchaikovsky, a glowing ring of light strands spreading outwards from the centre of the stage’s back wall. However, the final image, a close-up projection of the bottom of a Christmas tree, is indeed highly effective in indicating the transformation of scale marking the transition into the enchanted kingdom of the toys. (I can’t help but feel a painted backdrop would have done the job just as well for this section, but that’s a slippery slope towards my editor renaming the publication An Ancient-ish Perspective). I was also a fan of the humongous sky baubles ponderously suspended above the auditorium here. The projected drawings of individual toys in the second act is more effective still, and has more charm; the contrast between their sketched stasis and the vivaciously animated dancers helps enhance the magic.

Momoko Hirata’s dancing of the Sugar Plum Fairy is simply heart-stopping. Those exquisitely executed sequences burst with life: her precision, focus and strength, and the power held within each highly controlled yet ethereal, seemingly effortless movement moved me to tears. The first time I saw The Nutcracker aged six, I felt very grown up to be taken to the theatre to see such a spectacle, and kept a treasured postcard of the production’s Sugar Plum Fairy on my wall for years, before forgetting it like so many other relics of childhood. This time around, I felt wonderfully childlike – Hirata was of course just like the fairy on my bedroom wall, who I remembered all at once with great delight.

Drosselmeyer ponders at the ballet’s close whether the events that unfolded were all a sleepy little girl’s dream, reminding us to never underestimate the power of a little girl’s imagination. A gorgeous, sparkling feast for the eyes; Birmingham Royal Ballet will leave you feeling full of heart and curiously light on your feet.