Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 17 December 2009

THE NUTCRACKER is the most popular of all the traditional Christmas treats for balletomanes, with a slightly incoherent plot which is basically an elaborate frame for the well-loved, colourful and very accessible dances that make up the divertissement in Act 2. Usually it is presented as a rich confection, heavy on the sugar and glitter and thus entirely suitable for the festive season of excess. As the orchestra tuned up, Glasgow’s Theatre Royal filled with the excited buzz of an audience knowing it’s in for a treat. And how right they were.

Claire Robertson as Marie and Erik Cavallari as the Prince in Ashley Page’s The Nutcracker. (photo - Andrew Ross).

Six years ago, Scottish Ballet dug through the icing sugar to explore the original story by German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann and fished out a darker, starker and more disturbing plot. The resultant ballet resists slapping on the schmalz and is as hauntingly astringent and seasonal as frankincense.

Dr and Frau Stahlbaum (Paul Liburd and Soon Ja Lee) are totally wrapped up in their pursuit of pleasure and alarmingly insouciant about mice periodically invading their children’s nursery. Their pre-pubescent daughter Marie (Tomami Sato, perfectly cast) suffers at the hands of her sinister governess (Kara McLaughlin, doubling as the even more sinister, leathercorseted Dame Mouserink) and spoilt little brother Fritz (Luke Ahmet), who is surely destined for the Hitler-Jugend, while her relationship with her godfather, the eccentric, unmarried toymaker Drosselmeyer (Erik Cavallari), seems a little too inappropriately close for comfort, even without considering that he is also flirting heavily with her mother. And what kind of childhood results in an intense fixation on a wooden Nutcracker? Time for a call to social services, perhaps…..

So Ashley Page and Antony McDonald’s decision to set this in the Germany of the 1920s, during the Weimar Republic, makes perfect sense; a time of great cultural upheaval, when women’s place in society changed out of all recognition. Marie, on the threshold of adulthood, is unconsciously aware of the unsettling undercurrents while her parents party like it’s 1929.

So far, so Freudian. Cavallari’s duet with Sato at the start of Act 2 demonstrated excellent partnering skills, but things hot up even further in the apotheosis of the Act 2 divertissement, the Grand Pas de deux between Marie and The Nutcracker Prince (Tama Barry). Barry, like Nureyev and Nijinsky, has the sort of physique which builds large muscles; a handicap in some roles, but in this it was the perfect foil to Sato’s delicate, childlike fragility.

Above and beyond that, the dancers were precisely attuned both to the music and to each other, moving as one and, crucially, enjoying every moment; I cannot recall ever seeing a better partnership. Also treasurable was Sato’s gleefully precise execution of two gruelling series of fouttes.

As we have come to expect from Scottish Ballet, the evening was packed with visual treats, including some extraordinary lighting which made the front cloth appear to be 3D, a Pythonesque head of Tchaikovsky peering in the window, and the bear prowling across the idyllic rural landscape on the gauze at the opening of Act 2.

And of course, the costumes, particularly the bunny-tailed waitresses, Soon-Ja Lee’s slinky beaded flapper frocks, Paul Liburd’s opulent gangsta furcoat, decadent Flower Fairies straight out of a Lautrec poster, the laced, forest green velvet tailcoats sported by the Orchids (William Smith and Gabriel Barrengengoa) and the spiky Evil Snowflakes.

Bouquets all round, especially to the orchestra, under conductor Richard Honner, who were unobtrusively excellent, as all good ballet orchestras should be. The only flaw in the evening was the raggedness of some of the corps’ unison work, which should be tightened up as the run progresses.

(The Nutcracker is at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, from 20-23 January 2010).

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

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