The candied charms and mild magic of The Nutcracker may make it the obvious ballet treat for Christmas, yet there are always crowds of children for whom its leisurely dance numbers and oblique plot line are actually a bit of a bore. So the Royal Festival Hall's new dance version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol - cast with cobwebby ghosts, a flying stilt walker and even (for all those tots who don't understand why dancers refuse to speak) a narrator, might sound like the perfect family alternative .
Unfortunately, though, the ballet's choreographer, Christopher Hampson, and its director, Ian Mup, prove to be inexperienced cooks struggling with a bungled recipe. Not all of the ingredients in their Christmas Carol are of good quality, and the production does not yet have the heat to make a great show.
A bit of tweaking, however, might still rescue it. When the curtains opened on Thursday's premiere my heart lifted at the sight of a Victorian inner-city street scene with grim warehouses and some convincingly seedy tramps. This faint but encouraging whiff of squalor persisted in aspects of Kevin Richmond's Scrooge, whose sourly downturned mouth and scraggy hair gave him the look of a genuine misanthrope; and in some enjoyably ghoulish touches, including the first appearance of Marley's ghost, sliding through Scrooge's front door with chains clanking around his cadaverous frame and a coffin-soiled bandage binding his lantern jaw.
Elements of Hampson's choreography also work well. In the flashback scenes of Scrooge's past he throws off a gracefully poignant pas de deux for young Ebenezer and his long-suffering fiancee; he also invents neat movement motifs for characters that facilitate instant audience identification.
What he doesn't do, though, is dramatise the story. This is Hampson's first full-length narrative ballet and, while he can marshal his characters efficiently around the stage, he can't control the rhythm of the action so that it builds tension, rides a climax and touches its audience's heart. Hampson is not helped by his score, a low-budget cobbling-together of 19th-century excerpts - it may be dance-friendly but it lacks pace and atmosphere. And the narrator (Eric Sykes in a taped voiceover) is an opportunity squandered. Sykes's querulous, irritating bonhomie makes no one shiver; his lines are also oddly edited, with too much narrative at some points and a curious lack at others.
Yet the ballet's basic structure is sound, its energy is high and it has been deftly tailored around the awkward stage of the Festival Hall. With the investment of more time and money it could become a regular Christmas fixture.
• Until January 6. Box office: 020-7960 4242.
