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There is much borrowing from panto and magic shows. For the latter, Drosselmeyer appears as Elvis playing David Copperfield. Irek Mukhamedov has this to a tee - "Copperfield hands" on a body that's Elvis from the pelvis downwards. Inevitably many of the audience took this clever act as they found it without realising who they were watching. I hope at least some of them also appreciated the wonderfully controlled Mukhamedov cartwheel much later in the show - a moment to savour.

Irek Mukhamedov as Drosselmeyer
in a 'Fred and Ginger' routine with the Maid (Clara Barbera)
Photograph courtesy of the ENB Principal Daria Klimentova ©

Some of these references to life in 2002 received unflattering comments in the broadsheets. For what it's worth, an eleven year old seeing Grandpa taking a swig from his hip flask before dancing with his ladylove knew it contained alcohol - no mention of a dose of viagra, as one critic seemed to think, but a shot of traditional 'dutch courage'. And to say that Drosselmeyer in his cloak looked like Gary Glitter as one national critic did (i.e. implying that this was not a good role model) was way off beam; present day kids haven't heard of Gary Glitter, but Elvis is still The King, and he didn't wear the cloak for very long in any case.

The problem for ballet in taking on references from other theatrical forms such as panto is that ballet needs somehow to absorb that reference and make the borrowing its own. Panto is over the top; ballet can appear to peddle a paler imitation rather than adopting the other genre and making something new.

Sometimes I was left wondering whether the opening scene, over which much care had obviously been taken, needed to go a step further in integrating the elements within it - or perhaps a few more steps, because the dance numbers often involved only a few people. I felt the need for more developed work involving a bigger ensemble as a contrast.

The battle has been given the same attention to detail, with a reminder of cartoon capers when a mouse gets caught in the monster trap and loses his tail. Painful! Reinforcements are eventually parachuted in, action-man style, to ensure victory over the mice. The battle over, and a journey through the Land of Snow in prospect, snowflakes and jack frosts emerge from a giant fridge and speed across the stage, creating similar effects to those in the same choreographer's Double Concerto. This is the moment when dance audiences begin to find that they are in a landscape they know. The style of the choreography here suits the scene - the sharpness of frosts and blizzards rather than pretty snow flurries.

Grandpa (Kevin Richmond) chasing his Girlfriend, Ms V. Aggra (Jane Haworth)
Photograph courtesy of English National Ballet ©

The Kingdom of the Sweets is reached via a flight through the biting air -is it a bird or is it a (paper) plane? Either way, this neat piece of origami carries a host of messages (as do various bits of wallpaper earlier) from which you can glean bits of the story rather than try to read your programme in the gloom. This, I know, helped some of the young who had never seen Nutcracker before - it fills in a few details.

The divertissement that follows has some entertaining touches, and leads naturally to the Grand pas de deux and finale.

And that is that.

Clara flies away, the orchestra packs up, and we are into the curtain calls before we know it (without, unfortunately, the chance of applauding Grandpa and friends from the 1st Act - the children in the audience would have loved that). I found the ending rather abrupt, without any return to Maison Stahlbaum (though the family name is not acknowledged in the programme).

So, what of the whole? For one thing, it's a cleverly made piece for the Nutcracker market. It will pull in audiences who would not normally go near a classical ballet, and that in itself is surely good news. In fact, I can say that it already has made this impact. I took a party of 92 from my own (boys') school and our sister school. We went to an evening performance; it was totally voluntary, so homework had to be done at a different time. The majority of the takers amongst the boys (43 of them) were of the younger age-range (11/12), though all ages up to 18 were represented. The initial attraction was the idea of seeing a show containing such well-known music. At the end of the performance, the teachers who had been sitting with one group of 11 year-old boys said "That was brilliant!" (referring not only to the boys' reactions but also their own); they told me how the boys had been totally engrossed, humming along with the tunes they knew. One of those teachers immediately tried to get tickets for the following night to take her young son. The boys sitting near me were cheering Yat-Sen Chang after the Russian dance as if he had just won the high jump (in a way, he had). They loved his bear costume too. By this time they had been in the theatre for nearly two hours. Older members of the group enjoyed the production equally (including seasoned VI form musicians and playgoers).

I know of other family groups who have seen the show, including one man who couldn't remember if he was going to see Swan Lake or Nutcracker (well, it's a ballet by Tchaikovsky, isn't it?); not a habitual ballet-goer, as you'll have guessed (normally he'd never go near a ballet) he thoroughly enjoyed it. What catches the attention of people who are new to ballet is the party, with its references to present day culture. They are drawn in by it, and then take the journey to classicism in their stride.

I had various feed-back sessions with different groups of pupils, and time and again discovered a genuine enthusiasm for the production. Likewise, a group of 14 year-old girls were in high spirits when being driven home by a colleague, talking excitedly about the show rather than just being high on a night out. Again, it was the modern references that caught them; these are not particularly dance-orientated people, more involved with music or theatre generally, and willing to give anything a go. Ballet is an odd world to them, but they were left with the image of Sugar Plum and the Grand pas de deux, its slow, passionate cello melody taking us onto another level. (Hearing that music out of context makes it sound rather grand for a scene set in the Kingdom of the Sweets; hearing it in context, at the climax of the scene near the end of the ballet, makes you realise that Tchaikovsky knew what he was doing). The Oriental Dance was also a great favourite - a good take-off of the old fan-dance routine; there was enough humour in the whole collection of dances in Act 2 to keep the attention of those for whom a divertissement could seem to be an odd type of entertainment.

Irek Mukhamedov and Erina Takahashi in Christopher Hampson's Nutcracker
Photograph courtesy of the ENB Principal Daria Klimentova ©

The audience is thereby gently led to Russian Classicism. Ivanov (who completed the original choreography because Petipa was too ill to finish his project) survives in the Grand pas de deux, danced by Begona Cao and Vladislav Bubnov on our night. Some will not like the route by which this pinnacle is reached, while some will find it is just right for them; others will find it a slightly bumpy ride, but going in the right direction nevertheless.

Two days after seeing the show I had a brief discussion with someone who thought it a travesty; he wanted something more intellectually challenging! He and I meet in a post-modern contemporary class at the Bristol Community Dance Centre, and he had seen this Nutcracker in the company of a contemporary dancer who doesn't like ballet much at all - but she had enjoyed this production. When I expressed some reservations about the arrangements of the dances in the first scene he said we could launch into a philosophical discussion as to what is dance - but we didn't have time! However, his impression was that more care and attention had been given to the party scene than the rest. He liked the snowstorm, though, and acknowledged that it is so easy to be out of touch with young teens (and he' s much younger than I am!). We agreed that our favourite Nutcrackers are still Peter Wright's (mine being the BRB production).

Would I see it again? Yes, I would, far more willingly than ENB's last Nutcracker which I saw once, and that was enough. I might still have some reservations, and I will still believe that someone, sometime, is going to be able to produce a new Nutcracker that is fresh enough for new audiences, that reveres Petipa, Ivanov, and their tradition, and that can absorb new genres consistently and powerfully - in short, a Nutcracker which will be perhaps one stage on from this one. But I applaud the bravery of ENB in going out on a limb in a new direction with a well-loved favourite when so much of their income depends upon their annual Nutcracker.

I'm not averse to a ballet being led by its designer. After all, Benois and colleagues had an immense impact on the development of productions for the Ballets Russes. There's a great deal of fun in this production, not least in the designs, and there are some neat effects, as for example with the Mirlitons (see the swirl as they twirl - best viewed from above). However, I often find that designers forget about one large area - the floor. Many of us see these productions from above. Looking at a dark grey ballet floor for a long time can be very off-putting, especially in a slightly wacky setting such as this - it is possible to lift the look of the whole thing by paying more attention to the floor, and this is what the lighting designer for the current ENB Swan Lake has done. So, whether it's up to the designer, the lighting-designer, or a combination of both, something more needs to be done about that floor, not just occasionally.

Neither ballet nor opera can afford to be weak on production values in any area. Other forms of theatre have high expectations in this field, but sometimes it is as if ballet and opera don't get the same attention. From the sides of the theatre it was possible to see dancers waiting to come on stage - was some of the set missing? It was said that bits of the set were still being transported down the M4 just before the opening, the paint hardly dry; I heard that the rehearsal on the day before the opening was an absolute nightmare. Why can't a much vaunted première be properly ready on time?

Thomas Edur and Agnes Oaks
as the Prince and Sugar Plum Fairy
in Christopher Hampson's Nutcracker
Photograph courtesy of the ENB Principal Daria Klimentova ©

The overall concept is fun, with an imaginative storybook opening - and you have to take it as you find it. If you are a student of Hoffmann, don't look too hard for that author's complex layering of fantasy and reality, rich with metaphor - in any case, the scenario of the original production was derived from a translation by Dumas père, aimed at a younger readership and including light touches of French Romanticism rather than a hefty dose of Germanic gothic tendency. On the other hand, since it's all a little crazy (as Chris Hampson acknowledges in the well produced, colourful and informative programme), this ballet might tell us something of our personal feelings towards the media world which is such a powerful part of our culture, and which has informed the production.

For the moment, ENB's new Nutcracker will fill a big niche in the market. It was noticeable that the whole audience was intent on the action all evening; no fidgeting, even when we were getting towards the end. And this was a young audience, especially in the Upper Circle where those in school parties were charged a fiver each - an imaginative offer.

Good luck to ENB; I hope the audiences will come back for other ballets - if they don't, there won't be anything at all for any of us (including new rep., please note, ENB).