Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker! – New Adventures – review

Sadler's Wells, LondonThe Nutcracker was choreographed by Lev Ivanov in 1892 for the Imperial Russian Ballet, with a score by Tchaikovsky. The piece was not well received; the story of an adolescent girl transported from a Christmas party into a dreamworld, the Kingdom of the Sweets, was thought unreasonably bizarre, and the ballet childish and tasteless. If this can now be viewed as a wrong-headed judgment, especially in the light of Tchaikovsky's exquisite score and Ivanov's enchanting set pie...

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