Dance Debra Craine
The Nutcracker
London Coliseum
HHHIILatest crack at tradition
looks great but confuses
English National Ballet is
proud of its Nutcracker
tradition. The company
has been performing
Tchaikovsky’s ballet
every Christmas for 70
years (albeit last year’s
version ended up digital
only) and, as the ENB
director Tamara Rojo
says, The Nutcracker is
often the first exposurechildren have with her
art form so it’s vital for
developing the dance
audience of tomorrow. I
just wish ENB had a
better Nutcracker than
this.
This is the company’s
tenth version, created by
Wayne Eagling and Toer
van Schayk in 2010, and
for this revival Eaglinghas updated some of the
choreography — it’s
lovely and lively. But
dance isn’t the problem:
the story is confusing, the
second act lacks sparkle
(brighter lighting would
help) and the Christmas
tree — the ballet’s iconic
symbol — has no magic.
The evening starts well,
though. Peter Farmer’s
sets and costumes evoke
a fashionable vision of
Edwardian London, with
skating on the frozen
Thames outside, a grand
party inside — the frocks
are exquisite — and a
hot-air balloon to whiskWonderful costumes
and sets help to lift
English National
Ballet’s Nutcracker26 Saturday December 18 2021 | the times
News
Little Moons ice cream
balls have risen in salesThe potato has lost its position as
Britain’s favourite vegetable as people
return to eating out.
Tomatoes, which market research-
ers at NielsenIQ defined as a vegeta-
ble, are now the most popular. The
analysts said the shift occurred after
lockdowns eased and shoppers
turned away from cooking at home.
Sales of other grocery items that
are used for cooking from scratch,
such as sauces, rice and pasta, have all
fallen in the past year. There was also
a decline in hand dishwashing
products, which suggests that people
are spending less time washing up
at home.
Rachel White, managing
director UK & Ireland at
the market research
company, said: “Shop-
pers are beginning to
grow more accus-
tomed to life in pan-
demic Britain, and
this is reflected in our
latest top products
data, where we’ve seen
sales of some of the big-
gest stockpiling items fromPotatoes burnt by
the previous year, such as pasta, rice
and toilet roll, declining.”
There is also a new number one in
the fruit category, where a £26.1 mil-
lion increase in sales of strawberries
to £614.5 million, on the back of a
bumper harvest, made them more
popular than bananas.
The data, produced for The Grocer
magazine’s survey of top products
this year, identifies some of Britain’s
fastest growing foodstuffs.
Sales of Little Moons mochi ice
cream, which is inspired by Japanese
rice balls and has become a social me-
dia sensation, jumped by £17.6 mil-
lion. Items such as chocolate, bagged
snacks and energy and fizzy drinks
all put on sales.
The increase in working
from home and reduction
in socialising has
weighed heavily on
sales of deodorant,
down £37.8 million,
while cosmetics fell
by £40 million.
Sales of toilet roll,
supplies of which ranDominic WalshActors from diverse backgrounds
were reluctant to play a servant in
Sky’s adaptation of the 1972 film The
Amazing Mr Blunden, Mark Gatiss
has revealed.
The Sherlock and Doctor Who writ-
er and actor has reimagined the ghost
story for Sky’s Christmas Eve sched-
ule. Two modern-day children travel
back to 1821 to rescue children from
being murdered by Mr and Mrs
Wickens, played by Gatiss and Tam-
sin Greig. He said he auditioned a
number of actors for the role of Mea-
kin, the Wickens’s servant.
“Because the casting was entirely
open we did actually want to see
several actors who were not white,”
he said. “Quite a lot of them didn’t
want to be seen for servants and that
was an interesting moment. It’s a
lovely part and a very funny and in-
teresting part and they didn’t want to
go there and that reflects a shift in the
world of the drama.” Non-white ac-
tors play the modern family.Jake Kanter, Ben DowellDiverse actors
‘didn’t want to
play servant’
LLLittle
balls hnaging
d at
hn
ig-
fromThe in
fromh
in
we
sa
d
w
bsup