Tchaikovsky’s 1892 Nutcracker Suite must provide the most gloriously inconsequential excuse for a ballet ever, offering quite literally a sumptuous feast of sugar plums that still delights sweet-toothed audiences today. It’s also a fabulous excuse for costumes both elegant and fantastical, for an international range of different dancing styles and for young dancers wearing realistic mouse-heads to scamper around the stage. Scottish Ballet is, of course, no stranger to the piece, but the company has gone on developing and refining choreography and characterisation to effect nuances of definition that make this production feel simultaneously traditional and fresh.

The opening act is a big Christmas party in an affluent household, with lots of character-pieces for party-frocked children, doddery aunts and waltzing guests. The conjuror Drosselmeyer (here danced untraditionally as female) gives Clara, the daughter of the house, a curious nutcracker which usefully transforms into a handsome prince who helps fight off King Rat and his marauding mice. In victory the pair then travel to a land of sweeties from every nation, with the general effect that we have entered the world of Quality Street candies. The solo that everyone recognises is the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (the exquisite Marge Hendrick) with its tinkling, cut-glass theme played on the celeste, an instrument so cutting edge in Tchaikovsky’s day that he kept its use a secret until opening night. This, though, is only one treat from the selection box, as the short, non-narrative pieces known as divertissements offer sweeties from an assortment of countries, including French bon-bons in ravishing mauve costumes and a hornpipe recently added from an unfinished original fragment to give us a jolly English Jack Tar. With some of these pieces lasting only a minute, the effect is a dazzling mosaic of colours and flavours – just like a box of chocolates.

Gail-Nina Anderson