Nutcracker from McOnie Company opens at London’s new venue, the Tuff Nutt Jazz Club at the Southbank Centre, on Saturday 4 November 2023 and plays until 6 January 2024, with previews from 28 October 2023.
Drew McOnie said, “creating a jazz adaptation of the Nutcracker for my own company is exactly the sort of wild, impossible thing I would daydream about constantly as a young boy. I spent hours devising colourful worlds in my head where great theatre dancers and great musicians would tell stories that made me feel like I belonged somewhere. It’s my desire to fill this Nutcracker with heaps of that childlike wonder but with the added free-spirited mischief we all crave at Christmas time.”
Mark Ball, Artistic Director of Southbank Centre, said, “I am thrilled that we’re creating a brand new venue at the Southbank Centre—the Tuff Nutt Jazz Club—where audiences will experience a magical reimagining of Nutcracker from a brilliantly talented creative team.
"This is a Nutcracker that transports us to a world of self-discovery and adventure via a vision that brings together a jazz-infused take on Tchaikovsky‘s classic score by Cassie Kinoshi with adventurous choreography and storytelling from Drew McOnie.”
The Tuff Nutt Jazz Club is a newly transformed music and performance space at the Southbank Centre. Following performances of Nutcracker on Thursday to Sunday, the venue will host live sessions from leading music artists into the night.