It may only be early November but, having visited new pop-up venue the Tuff Nutt Jazz Club over the weekend to check out this contemporary Nutcracker, we’re feeling very much in the Christmas spirit already.
A bespoke, intimate venue within the Southbank Centre, this cosy space is the perfect setting for this new show which proves to be a festive delight.
Directed and choreographed by Drew McOnie and with Tchaikovsky’s score re-imagined by jazz composer Cassie Kinoshi, this is a cunningly condensed one-hour wonder.
It is very much an interpretation of the original – the music is performed live by a jazz quartet, who gleefully play around with arrangements and time signatures, but all of the ballet’s key melodic themes are present and correct.