I’m not a theatre snob so much as a hard-to-please spectator who’s inconveniently undecided on what he likes—a stance that annoys me and probably others, but also means that whether I’m watching a play, musical, or ballet (opera not included only because it’s still on my bucket list), I’m kind of open-minded.
The Nutcracker, if you didn’t know, is a ballet, from which form I want a bare minimum of athletic feats and a story (however slight) I can follow. The same as my minimum requirements for pro wrestling, then.
My only dance spectation in the last 12 months has been at pop concerts: Billy Nomates’ intuitive shape-throwing, Lalalar’s slippery gyrations, the red-hot Flamenco dancer at a Daniel Martinez show—all cruder forms than ballet. So, I attended this performance with an optimism increased by anticipation; the trip was several years in the making, having been promised to my mum as a birthday present four years ago. (Bad son.)
I’ll say now that I loved it, and that as best as I can recall it beat the tights off the Swan Lake performance I saw (also with mum) at the Royal Albert Hall 20 years ago.
Though this is the only performance I’ve seen there, I’m pretty familiar with the Royal Opera House. After university, I’d often scoot into London to see friends, and our mooches around the city tended to begin or end in Covent Garden, with the rooftop terrace of the ROH (not my second wrestling reference) a semi-regular hangout. I still find it an impressive building, but also a subtle one, with one entrance tucked into the corner of the Covent Garden quadrant. For this trip, we used the grander main entrance on Bow Street, which I’d never done before and which felt mildly monumental.
Our seats were in the gods—a detail worth noting because it always strikes me at live theatre that, as with the date of attendance (13th January for us—the last night, it turns out), your vantage point can be make-or-break w/r/t enjoyment. I had a ball up high, but someone further down might’ve been underwhelmed. Our position also felt like an advantage for the ensemble pieces, when it was like looking at ballet through a microscope—especially apposite for the art-imitates-nature type patterns that formed, dispersed, and reformed below us. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The Nutcracker begins with a toymaker, Herr Drosselmeyer (here: Thomas Whitehead), finishing his latest batch of toys, and placing an extra one, the nutcracker itself, in the bag—all done with much direction of the audience’s attention to a portrait in the corner of the workshop of a handsome military chap who the nutcracker toy resembles. This chap is Hans-Peter (Giacomo Rovero), Drosselmeyer’s nephew (though you couldn’t possibly discern the relation from the action).
From there, Herr Dross and his assistant deliver the goods to a palace where a small party is starting, and the nutcracker is given to a girl, Clara (Meaghan Grace Hinkis), who appears to be the oldest of the resident children. The nutcracker breaks when her brother snatches it, but the Dross fixes it, not without a little magic (which he’s already demonstrated he possesses).
When Clara steals down that night to play with the nutcracker, it turns into Hans-Peter (the nephew, remember) and they’re transported into an enchanted land where everything, including Clara, is toy-sized. Immediately, H-P and his soldiers must battle a mouse army(?!) and Clara intervenes to save his life and clinch victory. No one was around to explain this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode, but no one was complaining either. I’ve since retconned the explanation, which is that Herr Dross was responsible for inventing a trap that killed off half the mice population in the palace. In revenge, the wicked mouse queen turned Hans-Peter into a toy, with the condition that he’d only return to human form by defeating the mouse king and securing the love of a girl. Not a nice thing for the mouse queen to have done, but perhaps not disproportionate.
After that, it’s a ballet bonanza, followed by a super expedient finale where Clara and Hans-Peter return to the real world and share a don’t-I-know-you-from-somewhere moment when they pass on the street. She goes back to the palace, he reunites with Uncle Dross, curtain.
A fairytale, then (based on Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann’s 1816 “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”), and, fittingly, the staging is all enchantment, starting with the set designer’s snazziest trick: a fabric backdrop that in one light presents a solid image (e.g. Herr-Peter’s portrait), but in another disappears to reveal what’s behind (H-P moving around, watching his uncle). I was ecstatic whenever it was deployed, with the first wham-o usage a full-stage image of the outside of the palace that vanishes to reveal the party inside. The crowning moment came as Hans-Peter and Clara were transported between worlds and the backdrop not only whooshed to the ground but was sucked through the trap door, making it feel like the auditorium floor was disappearing. Other than that, the best stagecraft was Clara’s shrinking, when the Christmas tree at the back of the stage grew to three or four times its size via a whole lot more tree hidden beneath the stage being hoisted up.
As for the dancing: frankly, it took a while to get going. The establishing action at the palace meant dancers mostly running and milling around. That was good for the story (and pleasure of their tiny pitter-patter footsteps) but I was pleased when Drosselmeyer kicked things off with his magically dancing toys: a soldier, a harlequin, and a, er, “kissy doll” (the “moor” in the traditional staging was tastefully expunged). All performed mini-scenes ending with the toys being placed back into human-sized boxes or, in the most amusing moment, picked up—stiff as a board, as if a real toy—and carried off underarm by another dancer. The strength!
Other great moments included angels appearing to float across the stage using nothing except the miracle of feet hidden beneath giant skirts, and the first dance between what I thought was the enchanted world’s king and queen. At the time, I felt like their only true appreciator, assuming their number was another one-and-done like the Chinese, Russian, and Arabian dances. Only then they got the most rapturous applause of the evening, and I realised they were the main event. That made sense when I later saw the lady billed as “The Sugar Plum Fairy” (Mayara Magri; Reece Clarke was “The Prince”) and the dance billed as Sugar Plum pas de deux: Adagio in the programme. Duh. In all their dances, I counted no more than three occasions when they were more than a quantum out of step, and I’m still not convinced the third one happened.
I’ve owned (and maybe still do) Tchaikovsky’s score, and recall listening to and enjoying it as I would any other album. But hearing the compositions trotted out one after the other live is something else. And once you’ve passed the incidental music of the first half and got into the comparatively plotless second, you can’t move for greatest hits, with the run from “Chinese Dance” to “Variation II - Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" world-historical in a way you can feel. Someone with more developed aural facilities than mine can pick out which individual players excelled, but not these old cabbage ears. All I’ll say is that amidst the melting melodies and crescendos, the triangle truly is the chef’s kiss.