Nutcracker!

Synopsis

This delicious theatrical feast has family-sized helpings of Matthew Bourne’s trademark wit, pathos and magical fantasy. Nutcracker! follows Clara’s bittersweet journey from a hilariously bleak Christmas Eve at Dr. Dross’ Orphanage, through a shimmering, ice-skating winter wonderland to the scrumptious candy kingdom of Sweetieland.

Our Review:

15 February 2012

Twenty years on from its first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival, and ten years after a substantial reworking for his New Adventures dance company, choreographer Matthew Bourne is enjoying as much success as ever with his radical version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker! – complete with that all-important exclamation mark.

With stunning designs and costumes by long-term collaborator Anthony Ward, this radical retelling of the charming Christmas tale about a young girl, Clara, and her dream of the wooden toy that comes to life is vibrant, colourful and teeming with theatrical ideas.

Bourne and his original director, Martin Duncan, chose to move the opening scenes from the conventional setting of a family festive party to the much darker, almost Dickensian scenario of an orphanage, a notion which adds much to the contrast with Act Two’s extravagant Sweetieland.

It also allows for a great deal of comedy as the dreamland Clara is refused entry to Sweetieland by a hila...

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