Dance: I couldn't manage yet another Sugar Plum Fairy

It may be a Scroogish suggestion, but what if Christmas came but once every 48 months - as a sort of leap-year treat? That way, ballet directors might find some enthusiasm for doing new productions of The Nutcracker, and critics might have a sharper appetite for seeing them, without the wearying certainty that each will be doing the annual honours until the set begins to fray - five or six Christmases on average.

In fact, British audiences' familiarity with this particular 19th-century ballet is almost entirely due to the English National Ballet. Since 1950 the company has notched up no fewer than 47 nutcracking seasons at the Festival Hall, and last Monday opened the first of what it hopes will be many more at the Coliseum - Chris Smith permitting - with a new production dedicated to its adored late patron, Diana, Princess of Wales.

This Nutcracker is the first created for ENB by its artistic director, Derek "Think Big" Deane, he of the Albert Hall Swan Lake, and the pre- publicity suggested this might be eye-boggling in a similar way. Full sponsorship from Harrods (courtesy of guess who) and new designs from Sue Blane gave scope for a thorough overhaul of a work that famously delivers very little by way of plot, but musical inspiration by the sleigh-load. It's a grand opportunity for the imagination.

And Deane flunks it. With one eye on the velvet-Alice-band brigade, the other on the new adult audience generated by AMP's sparky style, he loses the focus entirely, and ends up pleasing neither.

We get a traditional Clara in a Victorian dress cooing over her nutcracker doll (do adolescents really rock toys in their arms? I think not), while the other children at the party get Robocop, Barbie and Michael Jackson. We get a busybody Drosselmeyer who arrives on an Edwardian butcher's bike, and adult guests who natter on mobile phones.

Then there's King Rat who, when his head is knocked off, turns out to be Clara's dad (he may have been dallying with a bit of skirt earlier at the party, but maybe I'm being too harsh). Too many ideas, too little thought.

The old logistical problem of why the nutcracker should first turn into a soldier and then turn into a prince is not addressed, and nor is the business of his dancing a soaring pas de deux with Clara in one scene and giving all his attention to the Sugar Plum Fairy in the next. Alhough, to her huge credit, Tamara Rojo acts out the girl's excitement and confusion (it's a hard choice between sex and sweets) with such conviction that the nonsense of all this matters less.

Blane's best design ideas are her liquorice-allsort tutus and the giant bags of pick'n'mix that twirl about the stage like unmanned dodgem cars. But she lapses with confections in gloopy pink and mauve for the Waltz of the Flowers, and a set that looks as if the entire contents of a confectionery counter have been spewed all over the walls. This may be in deliberately childish contrast to the chic decor of the parents' drawing room, but it sure is ugly.

That leaves two reasons for going to see this show: the fine dancing of the principals (Deane certainly knows how to draw in foreign talent), and the imperishable Tchaikovsky score, driven along at a fair old lick by the resident orchestra under Patrick Flynn. Those hoping to fall under that fabled Nutcracker spell will just have to wait five years.

In quest of a bracing antidote, I was lured to a tiny studio theatre in a back street behind the Coliseum to see a fringe show called The Red Socks by the Dance Theatre Red company.

Their original idea seems to have been to parody that classic girls' ballet film, The Red Shoes. Fair enough. But I can honestly say I have never watched anything so peculiar in my life. Three women and two men appear dimly through the fog trudging round in a circle carrying what look like gondola poles. They trudge for a long time. Then each in turn dons a pair of grubby red socks and spends the rest of the mercifully short evening flinging his or her limbs about in a fashion I can only describe as free-style, artless kitsch. I can no more say what was going on than account for why one of the women was sporting a short beard, a fact which continued to worry me all the way home. For the rest, it's a blank. Don't go.

ENB: Coliseum, WC2 (0171 632 8300), to 10 Jan. 'The Red Socks': Tristan Bates Theatre, WC2 (0171 240 3940), to 20 Dec.