A Mid-Advent’s night dream full of style, and wonder.
📍 The Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 1 DEC TO 24 DEC 2021
🕖 Running time: approx. 2 hours including one 20 minute interval
👥 Choreography: Peter Darrell
👥 Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
👥 Set & Costume Design: Lez Brotherston
👥 Lighting Designer: George Thomson
💰 From £19.50
🎭 Audio Description & Touch Tours were available
Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker opened in 1892 to mixed reviews, and more importantly, a poor box office performance for the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg. The composer didn’t think much of his work either, and it wasn’t until decades later that the show would enjoy new life and subsequently unending commercial popularity. The secrets to its belated success lay in emigration to the USA, the abandoning of its original choreography, and in repositioning itself as a wholesome Christmas classic, rather than a somewhat sinister fairy tale.
One sell-out season in 1944 San Francisco led to another, the show spreading first nationally, then internationally, and as of today this particular artistic wildfire is yet to die back. Yes, Ballet goers, The Nutcracker achieved the American dream, with knobs on.
Fast forward to 2021, and The Nutcracker is possibly the most popular ballet in the world, despite, or perhaps because of a firm resistance to acknowledge any single “definitive” version. Jules Vernes’ original libretto, adapted from an E.T.A. Hoffman short story, is more often taken as a skeleton to hang one’s own tale upon, or which to bury entirely in favour of something completely new.
As with Verne, Scottish Ballet founder Peter Darrell’s 1973 iteration adopts a young girl, Clara, as our nominal protagonist, and opens with a grand Christmas Eve’s party at her family home. Amidst the dancing, drinking, and merry-making, the magician Drosselmeyer, appears to enliven proceedings and hand out gifts. Clara receives a handsome Nutcracker doll, and immediately falls in love. Departing from Verne, Darrell then sends her to her sleep clutching this new companion, and to dreams of handsome princes, villainous Rat Kings, and Sugar Plum Fairies. (Verne has her rise in the night to find the real world populated by seven-headed rat kings, and cursed princes. When Clara rides off into the sunset in this finale, there’s no reason to suppose she’s ever coming back…)
Establishing a thoroughly child-centric vision, Darrell’s ballet features a prominent cadre of munchkin dancers, a move in sympathy with the original 1892 production which was criticised for casting too many children in leading roles. Evidenced by the performance of the 23rd December, Christopher Hampson, the current Artistic Director of Scottish Ballet, has recruited a charming band of talented youngsters sufficient to allay any fears of gaucheness, or amateurism. My compliments, particularly to Chloe MacDuff our Clara for the evening, a young woman light of foot, with natural stage presence and poise.
That’s it, a sentence or two more and you’d have the entire plot, with all nuance included. Normally, in a dramatic work, such paucity would, on balance, be a bad thing. Not so here. Why? Simply because the music is so wonderful, the stage so gorgeous, the choreography so enchanting, and the performers so endlessly sparkling.
Without question, the standout performance of the night was given by Sophie Martin whose impossibly graceful Snow Queen transmuted an already impressive first act, into transcendent joy.
The second act, a journey into ‘The Land of Sweets,’ is essentially a series of showcase dances representing confectionary from around the world, accompanied by music to make you go, “oh I know that one.’
There might not have much story to it, but it really doesn’t matter.
The orchestra under maestro Jean-Claude Picard, continually fills the theatre with glorious, soaring, and carefully nuanced sound, whilst every single dancer strives to knock your socks even further from your feet than the last.
Constance Deverney exhibited diamond sharp poise and control, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, whilst Jerome Barnes delivered muscular, and massively crowd-pleasing turns as both King Rat, and the English dancer (performing a sailor’s jig seen through Russian eyes.) Aisling Brangan’s mesmeric Arabian Dance, suitably short of veils and entirely family friendly, was still effortlessly flowing and seductive.
Christopher Hampson knows how to coax the very best from every single one of his performers. The joy and confidence evident in the cadre of younger performers which populate this show suggests an admirably universal touch. Those familiar with earlier, and other productions of The Nutcracker will notice that Hampson, and his creative team, have presumed to edit proceedings in an effort to modernize the ballet as per modern sensibilities on race representation. The result is still The Nutcracker, just with less yellow-face, and a little more cultural authenticity, in other words, an improvement.
Oh, and if you’re concerned that Drosselmeyer is sometimes played by a woman, in this case a greatest showman worthy Madeline Squire, don’t be. Not only does it make absolutely no difference to the – minimal – narrative, she’s also a magic box full of fabulousness.
Overall, Darrell/Hampson’s choreography is perpetually adventurous, reaching some seriously impressive artistic, and even comedic heights. The Pas de Deux twixt Nutcracker prince and the Sugar Plum Fairy is a joyful highlight of the second act, with lifts to put Dirty Dancing to shame, thought it somewhat shades the headline Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy which follows. Though delicate, that number somehow lacked the floating, spellbinding quality required to set it apart. This is a minor quibble amidst what is a gorgeous show from beginning to end.
Lez Brotherston’s staging is majestic at all times, from the opening bewintered street scene, to lushly curtained soiree, snowy forest, and Christmas bauble infested dreamland. George Thomson’s lighting design is meticulously delivered, summoning snow, moon, and stars on command. This is all-guns blazing, thoroughly immersive Christmas glamour, and that’s precisely what we want from a festive ballet.
Unfortunately due to Covid-19, you won’t be able to see this show until it reaches Aberdeen later in January. If you’re in Edinburgh, or Glasgow, and wonder if a trip north is worth the effort and cost, my answer is an unmitigated yes. I loved this show, and I’m unashamed to say there were passages of vibrant beauty sufficient to brings tears to my jaded, 42 year old eyes.
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Lovely description of something, like Santa Claus, guided into a perennial favorite by people who need a reassuring beauty at this time of year, cast AND audience.
Is Sugar PlumB a typo? Or intentional. I thought it was a yuletide sweet.
Indeed a typo! A Christmas thanks from me Alicia. I hope you’re having a peaceful Yuletide?
Her posture is plumb straight, so not a bad typo.