Northern Ballet's Nutcracker Is Ageing Well

Don't You Think Their Orchestra Is Worth Saving?

Northern Ballet dancers in The Nutcracker. Photo credit: Kyle Baines

The British are notoriouisly ill at ease with their Continental neighbours. But there’s one exception. Thanks to the 18th and 19th-century influence of our German-descended Royal Family, at this time of year we’re more than happy to go the full mitteleuropa. Even the much-dreamed-of White Christmas seems to belong to a weather pattern that isn’t quite ours.

It’s no surprise then, that The Nutcracker, a ballet first choreographed by Frenchman Marius Petipa in 1892, set to music by Russian Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and based on a short story by Prussian writer ETA Hoffman, has been adopted as one of our own, as much a part of Yuletide over-indulgence as a family-sized tin of Quality Street. To do a minimalist performance of The Nutcracker in grey leotards would be unthinkable, so much would it miss the point.

On Thursday afternoon I escaped a torrential downpour in Leeds to sit in damp and gently steaming clothes next to an iron pillar in the Upper Circle of Leeds Grand Theatre. Free press tickets have spoiled me. I’m not used to hunching forwards for two hours in the vertiginous cheap seats to get a full view of the stage. And the seats weren’t cheap. I and the people around me, ordinary working people from Leeds with elderly and disabled relatives in tow, had paid £35 a head for the privilege. That’s commitment: The same commitment that brings non-theatre-going families back to the pantomime every year.

I paid for my ticket, instead of hustling for a free review seat, because I wasn’t sure I had anything useful to say about a much-loved cash-cow that’s been in the repertoire since 2007. I just wanted to see the show. So I did. And it turned out there was plenty to write about after all.

Three rows in front of me, a pair of young teachers were trying to organise a party of a dozen school children. This was no mean feat. Every child was dressed in a dripping acid-green-and-silver high-visibility jacket, which had to be individually removed in the cramped aisles and seating area, and taken away for safekeeping. Then they all wanted to sit next to their friends. This, at one point, began to look like an elaborate mathematical conundrum. But at last they were all settled in their seats. They were probably tired, having walked in a crocodile all the way from Moorside.

Then the house lights dimmed, the curtain rose, and as one they all decided that, actually, they were sitting next to the wrong friends. So they leapt up in a panic and began rearranging themselves in the dark. There was much frantic whispering as the overture rang out and we were introduced in a balletic fashion to the Edwards family preparing for their Christmas party.

It was all very entertaining, even before the show had properly started. And obviously, The Nutcracker ballet with its toy soldiers and mischievous mice is a much better live performance for children than Pilot Theatre’s drearily didactic Noughts & Crosses, which I reviewed earlier this year. The kids loved it. The only questions that rang out were engaged ones. “Are they real?” asked a puzzled child as on stage two lifesized ‘dolls’ were removed from a giant box and began awkwardly to dance.

My own favourite moments in this box of delights were the toy musketeers who advanced on the mice in a fair imitation of the ferociously disciplined advance-and-reload line formation that rightly or wrongly won us the Empire, and a pair of body-popping Chinese acrobats.

Northern Ballet dancers in The Nutcracker. Photo credit: Bill Cooper

The first sign that something was deeply wrong had come earlier, outside the theatre, when a nice lady approached me through the deluge to hand me a leaflet. I have it with me here, somewhat rain-spattered. Keep Northern Ballet Live! it says. Hashtag #KeepNorthernBalletLive

“Northern Ballet’s funding has not changed much since 2015,” it reads. “In the biggest cost of living crisis for decades, that’s a real terms funding cut.

“As a result, Northern Ballet is already scheduling less touring work.

“Now, they are being forced to consider getting rid of their live orchestra for some touring productions and replacing the musicians with recorded music.

“These musicians are not salaried. They are on freelance contracts. Some are already relying on food banks to survive.”

That’s right. The first-rate musicians of a world-class ballet company in an allegedly First World country are depending on food banks to survive. No wonder we clapped them tumultuously but they can’t survive on applause alone.

The Northern Ballet, whilst an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation (£3.29m in 2022), is by no means lavishly funded and has always operated on a small scale and tight budget when compared with the Royal Ballet Company in London’s Covent Garden. Nevertheless, until the great pandemic it was on a critical roll under the artistic directorship of David Nixon CBE, and regularly produced new works — such as 2017’s Beauty And The Beast — which were both popular and technically demanding.

And now what? Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things if a regional ballet company loses its sinfonia?

I say yes, in the present UK political context, it really does. Because Britain, like the Eloi and the Morlocks of HG Wells’ The Time Machine (which I am currently listening to on audiobook) is rapidly becoming two nations. One, the South East, has an economy characterised by high productivity, high investment and high growth, the other - the rest of the country with the exception of Greater Manchester and oil-fuelled Aberdeenshire - doesn’t. You can find the ONS figures here.

With a lower population density and more rugged terrain, the North will always be scored lower by the Treasury than the South East when calculating the return in investment on public infrastructure. As a result we have a chronic transport system whilst London got the new £25bn Elizabeth Line. According to a 2019 paper by the Institute of Policy Research, if the North had seen the same per person transport investment as London over the previous decade, it would have received £66 billion more than it actually did.

Along with most sentient Northerners, I can no longer hear the words ‘Northern Powerhouse’ or ‘levelling up’ without snorting derisively. If a new trans-Pennine transport system weaved Manchester, Leeds-Bradford, Liverpool and Sheffield into one megalopolis with a single beating heart, we’d have a fighting chance of rebalancing the economy. (Look at the map, my friends, the map.) And I’d be able to see more shows, in a green fashion, without having to worry about snow, floods, leaves on the line, electrical failures, driver shortages, bridge mechanisms jamming and whatever other predictable challenges our under-invested and hopelessly fragmented rail system fails to meet. But instead, the government has already wasted possibly as much as £50bn, mostly on attempting to tunnel beneath the scenic Chilterns, in order to cut minutes off the journey time from London to Birmingham.

Serana Kitano, Archie Sherman and Kirica Takahashi in Northern Ballet’s The Nutcracker. Photo credit: Bill Cooper

The ancient regime is always the last to hear the drumbeat of revolution, even as the tumbrils are at the palace gates. The populist regions — and, to be fair, many working class Londoners — have already bitten the ‘elites’ in the bum twice at the polls — once during the Brexit referendum and a second time when they elected Boris. They will do so again, and harder, unless the levelling-up message is finally heeded, and expensive One Nation policies genuinely pursued to the possible short-term disadvantage of the most prosperous regions.

It’s not about party politics. Rebalancing the economy to make our country fairer and more at ease with itself will take German Reunification levels of infrastructure spending, and here in the UK none of our existing political structures look as if they are remotely up to the job.

But in the meantime, there is a small, cost-effective, hard-working regional ballet company that’s based in Leeds and has an international reputation. It can be saved with a few million from the Government. It’s peanuts and it’s a quick win.

Please sign the petition to keep Northern Ballet Live.

The Nutcracker runs until Dec 10 at Leeds’ Grand Theatre, £20-£72.

What’s On Dec 11-17

Beauty and the Beast at the SJT. Photo credit: Tony Bartholomew

The reviews are trickling in, the production photography has arrived, and as I predicted, Nick Lane’s unusual pantomime adaptation of Madame LePrince de Beaumont’s exquisitely hopeful fairy tale Beauty And The Beast for the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough is a winner. The town, rebranded Scarbolopolis, falls victim to a mysterious machine that’s pumping out fear (remind you of anything?) but the underlying seriousness of the message doesn’t obliterate the gags and boisterous audience participation is at the heart of the action. A special merit goes to Helen Coyston for the costumes. To Dec 30, £10-£18

Beauty And The Beast at Doncaster’s CAST Theatre. Photo Credit: david8photography

CAST Doncaster’s Beauty And The Beast, written by Neil Hurst and directed by Tess Seddon, carries less darkness but it has that genuine streak of lunacy — are those dancing cockroaches? — that differentiates a really good local pantomime from the rest. The action takes place in the fictional French town of Donny-le-Don and characters include Dame Cherie Trifle, Philippe Philoppe and the helpful Fairy Nuff. I’m chuckling already. To Dec 31, £15-£31.50. Limited availability, so hurry.

Sheffield

Sheffield Theatre’s show, A Town Called Christmas, for the teeny-tinies has a good provenance. It’s by the award-winning children’s theatre company Wrongsemble. Written and directed by Elvi Piper, it tells — somewhat convincingly for a young Northern audience — of a magical place where things are crumbling to bits. Who will save the day? Dec 15-30, £12 & £14.

Meanwhile, across town and at the other end of the continuum, Sheffield’s Theatre Deli presents Jingle Belles And Mistle-Hoes by The Glitterbomb Dancers. Yes, well. Oh dear. Dec 14-23, £17-£30.

And you won’t go far wrong with Leeds Playhouse’s worthy production of Lionel Bart’s ‘problematic’ Oliver! Directed by James Brining, it ticks the politically correct boxes and earns the Guardian newspaper’s seal of approval. To Jan 27, £15-£60.

Riptide’s Intermission is a therapeutic experience. Photo credit: Lucy Forrester

Finally, I was in Leeds to participate in Riptide’s Intermission, an ‘immersive, therapeutic experience” in a transformed third-floor office suite in Merrion Street. I’ll do full justice to this event in next week’s edition, my last before I break for Christmas and the New Year. No spoilers but, if you’re having any qualms about shelling out for this, I’d say ‘just do it’. It won’t banish any major life difficulties or psychological traumas but it’s just what the therapist ordered for busy people who have responsibilities or give loads to others, and who sometimes feel ground down by the contradictory demands of modern life. At no point does it cross any inappropriate boundaries and you’ll go home with a refreshed perspective. To Dec 23, £45.

Liz x