The Royal Ballet, The Nutcracker in Cinemas

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You may have been surprised to learn that The Royal Ballet's unsurpassable production of the Christmas ballet, The Nutcracker, wouldn't take to the ROH stage this year, making way for another magical ballet, Ashton's Cinderella.

No need to pine, though: you can still take the family to a show of The Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker at a cinema near you. The performance to be screened was filmed last year, with a fantastic cast that includes principals Anna Rose O'Sullivan and Marcelino Sambé in the Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux.

Here's a reminder of the main aspects of this production by Sir Peter Wright:

It has been running since the mid-1980s, but looks as fresh as if newly minted, with every element fitting into the whole to create theatrical magic.

Julia Trevelyan Oman’s sumptuous, minutely detailed designs recreate the Biedermeier drawing-room of the well-off Stahlbaum family, whom we join at their Christmas Eve party, and then the elaborate gilded spun-sugar set for the Kingdom of the Sweets, where Act II takes place.

Sir Peter Wright’s narrative is clear even to the youngest ballet-goer and responds perfectly to Tchaikovsky’s miraculous score played live by an in-form Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Andrew Litton.

Anchoring the narrative is the mysterious Herr Drosselmeyer, whose gift of a nutcracker to young Clara is the starting point for the fantastic plot that develops – Clara's dream journey through the Kingdom of the Sweets (was it really a dream?).

All details and full cast here