1 – 5 February
Packed with tempting delights, Nutcracker! is an irresistible chocolate box of a show. Thirty years ago, Matthew Bourne breathed new life into The Nutcracker, and did so brilliantly. There were some who blanched at the thought of messing with such an iconic ballet, but others had long recognised that a major overhaul of its rather weak storyline was overdue. After all, way back in 1892 Tchaikovsky himself expressed a very low opinion of it. Bourne’s version retains the fantasy and romance of the original ballet, and all of Tchaikovsky’s glorious music, but replaces its rather vacuous storyline with a much stronger narrative. Featuring a host of colourful characters, a generous dose of comedy, and even a touch of social realism, Bourne’s Nutcracker! comes back to the Hippodrome in spruced up form, offering some new choreography and revamped set and costume designs.
Right from the off it is clear that Nutcracker! differs greatly from the cosy old original. The curtain does not rise to reveal the spacious parlour of a comfortable upper-class home, but a gloomy children’s orphanage, where Clara is one of the grey-clad residents. It is Christmas, and the orphans are receiving meagre gifts from orphanage boss Dr Dross and his formidable wife, who seems much more comfortable giving orders than she is giving pressies. Daisy May Kemp invests Mrs Dross with a cold rigidity that contrasts sharply with Clara’s lively cheekiness. Katrina Lyndon portrays Clara as a spirited, fun-loving girl who is as least as fond of one of the orphan boys as she is of her Christmas present – a nutcracker, rather resembling a ventriloquist’s dummy. Sugar, the Dross’s horribly mean daughter, takes a fancy to the nutcracker doll and to Clara’s young man, too. That young man seems very vulnerable to Sugar’s questionable charms, and the rivalry between Clara and Sugar becomes a sturdy narrative thread that runs through all that follows. Sugar, played with preening self-satisfaction by Ashley Shaw, gets into a fight over the doll with her equally horrid brother, Fritz, danced with equal smug nastiness by Dominic North. The doll becomes dismembered, which leads to very funny attempts at its resuscitation.
The Dross family and their guests leave the orphanage, midnight strikes, and with a clap of thunder the nutcracker doll comes alive. Harrison Dowzell cleverly depicts the doll’s transformation, with big, uncertain gestures gradually becoming more controlled as he takes on the human form of Nutcracker, a strapping young man who is strikingly similar to the one who has captured Clara’s heart. In a vigorously choreographed scene of mayhem, the children rise up in rebellion, the walls of the orphanage spectacularly split open, and Clara finds herself transported to a frozen lake. The drab greyness of the orphanage has gone; here, all is blue sky and bright white snow. Clara’s orphan friends are now merry ice skaters, dressed all in white fur, scarves and pompoms. But the Dross siblings are here too, now transformed into Princess Sugar and Prince Bon-Bon. Once again, Clara seems doomed to lose out to the more sophisticated Sugar.
In Act Two Clara meets a couple of pyjama-clad Cupids who take her to Sweetieland. An enormous mouth contains double doors, guarded by a rotund humbug. Various sweets arrive, clutching invitations that allow them to enter the mouth. This scene is surely the highlight of the whole show. With outrageous costumes and startlingly athletic dance sequences, there’s a delightful fruit and nutcase madness to it all. There are biker gobstoppers, stamping and strutting their stuff; there’s a trio of shiny licorice allsorts; and five pink marshmallows, all leggy fluffiness, tottering along like girls on a hen night. Best of all is Jonathan Luke Baker’s Knickerbocker, a snake-hipped lounge lizard with a whipped cream hairdo. With his cigarette holder firmly clamped in his mouth, he’s a toothsome Terry Thomas. Throughout the Sweetieland scene there’s a lot of licking and lip-smacking, with the link between a desire for chocolate and desire of a more carnal kind made clear, but there’s nothing darkly Freudian here. All seems to be light-hearted sweetness, but should Clara be tempted into this sugary world? Will it offer sweet delight or sickly disappointment?
Over the years there have been many attempts to give this ‘fairy ballet’ a convincing conclusion; Bourne’s version succeeds admirably. Finding fantasy less than satisfying, Clara returns to the orphanage. There she makes a final escape, but this time into the real world.
Offering spectacle, romance and a great deal of fun, Nutcracker! is a hugely inventive and superbly danced ballet. Catch it if you can.
★★★★★ Mike Whitton 2nd February 2022
