The Nutcracker, a ballet about a girl whose doll morphs into a grown man before taking her to a talent show performed by sweets, is just about as bonkers a Christmas tradition as bringing a tree indoors or gaslighting children into believing a man from Lapland delivers their presents. And yet there is something comforting about its sweeping music, its sugar-simple story and the magic it invites you to step into. 

Scottish Ballet’s update of their 2014 production (which builds on Peter Darrell’s 1972 choreography) is classic and sumptuous, leaning into its Victorian setting with gusto. Lez Brotherston’s costumes and set all but steal the show, exquisitely detailed with tactile fabrics to sink your eyes into. When the curtain rises onto a parlour dressed for a party (a cake-laden table centre stage, velvet drapes exotically framing the scene), you know you are in safe hands for a traditional Christmas treat. 

And a treat it is, with Scottish Ballet’s cast solidly delivering a pageant of courtly ensemble dances and flashy displays of technique. Small, creatively comic or surreal touches are the cherries on the cake: two dowager sisters stumbling about the party; a cast of children playing mice with giant heads; Drosselmeyer (Melissa Polson) performing Victorian stage levitations; and the foppish toy soldiers, wiggling their swords. Marge Hendrick and Nicol Edmonds deliver a grand pas de deux as crisp and stately as royal icing, while a spirited performance from Scottish Ballet’s orchestra brings a sense of occasion.

Scottish Ballet: The Nutcracker is on tour until Saturday 8 February; reviewed at Theatre Royal, Glasgow.