Review: The Nutcracker
December 19, 2008
Date reviewed: 17 December 2008
Venue: Leeds Grand Theatre and Opera House
Christmas on the stages of Leeds has a conservative tint this year. The City Varieties is always staunchly traditional, of course, as the platform for yearly pantomimes (this year it’s Jack and the Beanstalk). The West Yorkshire Playhouse, on the other hand, is hosting its co-production of Peter Pan – admittedly a musical, but still faithful to the narrative that is one of the festive season’s vertebrae – and the debut of Mike Kenny’s adaptation of The Snow Queen, a tale whose juxtaposition of warm, resolute emotions with a chilly, forbidding backdrop imbue it with potential to achieve similar status.
However, Northern Ballet Theatre’s The Nutcracker, which has just begun its second year of performances at Leeds Grand, is perhaps more conservative still. Not only is Tchaikovsky’s 1892 work a seasonal giant, but NBT artistic director David Nixon has sought to inject his rendition with authenticity by setting it in the Regency period, which was when ETA Hoffman wrote the original narrative, entitled ‘The Nutcracker and the Mouseking’ (1816).
Pedestrian as this may sound, the setting is harnessed adeptly from the outset. Its gentility gives tender humour to the sense of domestic stillness punctured by a family’s annual gathering for Christmas. The huge, ornate door separating the hall from the living room and the radiantly smart costumes jar endearingly with Mrs Edwards Senior’s ongoing fussy monologue and the children’s use of the spacious hallway as a venue for numerous improvised sports.
However, the setting also provides a pristine and overbearingly civilized real world whose contrast with the apparent fantasy one that invades it compounds the latter’s vivid extravagance (a point that Nixon has emphasised). Since she has spent most of the evening in a resplendent living room, all sky-scraping, gold-framed mirrors and compartmentalised walls battling a rotund tree, dominated by adults swirling through (crisply delivered) steps, Clara’s delight at a little spontaneity seems acutely understandable. Moreover, when Uncle Drosselmeyer arrives, his incongruity gives him presence, along with the sheer volume of his richly coloured attire.
The battle with the Mouse King, inevitably a jagged hurdle because half the performers have to wear enormous masks, is negotiated ambitiously. Not only do the Mouse King and his minions bear themselves elegantly, but the cavalry fronts the Nutcracker’s army with remarkable grace. The disparity between the darkened living room and the cardboard appearance of the Nutcracker’s compact castle and the Mouse King’s dairy domain also demarcates reality and fantasy sharply.
The standard of dancing set toward the end of the first half is, however, more than maintained in the second. Among the array of characters and backdrops, the finest work is probably that of the Harlequins, whose conjunction of effortless athleticism with spotless synchronicity is so dazzling that the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier’s dignified performance almost seems anticlimactic.
Throughout, you feel that Tchaikovsky’s score is being treated reverently, with dancing, settings, costumes and lighting all blending courteously with it. This collage perhaps peaks during the Snowflakes’ magnificent dance, a segment of the tale and score whose scope for wintry beauty is exploited attentively. While not all the dancing matches that of the Harlequins for telepathic synchronicity, each collective displays fluidity both among its dancers and with the set and music. Any urge toward pedantry is resisted in favour of expression, and this underpins an organic and intelligent Nutcracker.
It is chiefly Nixon and designer Charles Cusick Smith’s distinction between concern for historical authenticity, in the parts set in the real world, and tailoring elements for the whole, in those set in the realm seemingly rooted in Clara’s imagination, that renders NBT’s production so compelling. Full of understated wit, it is the calorific treat for eyes and ears that every good Nutcracker should be.
-Simon Walker
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2 Responses to “Review: The Nutcracker”
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i think it was propper boring i wanted them to speak i went with school everyone hated it man
Realistically, if you were hoping for dialogue, you probably shouldn’t have gone to see a ballet.