Aren't we lucky to have the Royal Albert Hall and in such a good state of repair? Heaven only knows how they afford to keep it so lovely but walking in to this magnificent building is always like walking into a fairy tale. You can easily imagine glamorous people from a bygone age strolling through the corridors and it looks particularly gorgeous with strings of Christmas lights around every balcony.I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy THE NUTCRACKER ON ICE, I know nothing about ice skating and only enough about the ballet to know it’s a tedious plot-less affair. But oh the music! Tchaikovsky’s score shimmers like moonlight on a lake and is so delicious you could eat it. On this occasion it's performed and admirably amplified so that it wraps itself around you like an exotic perfume.
The on stage spectacle isn't bad either. My heart sank when I saw we were in for an evening of projected scenery, that cost-effective staple of international touring, but it was so basic it was rather sweet and when they pumped enough dry ice and lit enough stars around it, it did indeed pass muster as "magical".
In front of it cute Russian ice dancers perform the well-known story of a girl who dreams that a nutcracker in the shape of a soldier becomes one, defeats some mice, whisks her off to meet some sweets and then brings her home.
Now, I don’t know much about ice skating and it was quite difficult for me to spot which was the clever stuff. To me merely skating across the stage looks terrifying but the audience around me regularly burst into applause mid-routine so I think there are plenty of impressive stunts for those who know enough to appreciate them.
The trouble is that I'm not entirely convinced ice-skating is a very effective way of conveying narrative. All you can really do is skate in a straight line or spin in a circle, how fast you do this and how many jumps you add differentiates one move from another but hardly suggests emotional depth.
Luckily the Nutcracker story is so slight it doesn't really matter and the speed of the skating does add a sort of “dancing in the air” swiftness and agility.
So all-in-all I was caught up in the Christmassy magic of it all. Quite how engaging it’ll be in the cold light of January is another story.
Back in the 1980s when greed was good and power was sexy this adaptation of an 18th century French novel was a massive hit.