I like ballet, and I love Christmas, so The Nutcracker is one of my favorite annual traditions. I've seen the Balanchine version every year since I came to the city. I always enjoy it, and this year it was even better than usual because I had good company. The production is full of familiar music and beloved characters and transcendent moments, and every year I notice different little details. I was engrossed by the first act and thrilled by the second act and buzzing with happiness by the time I left.
The ABT version had a couple of strikes against it from the beginning: I had to go to Brooklyn, my theater companion was unavoidably detained, and the theater was full of young children and, worse, overtalkative hipsters. Still, I was excited to see a familiar ballet in a new incarnation.
The first act was odd, but interesting. Everything was a little bit more different than I thought it would be. I knew the choreography would be totally different, and the costumes and sets. I didn't realize, though, just how much of the story is open to interpretation. In the NYCB version, Clara (the princess) and Fritz (her brother) are young children - maybe six or seven - and their antics read as playful gamboling. In the ABT production, they're preteens - at least ten, possibly older - and their furious insistence on more and more gifts and rough fighting over the presents they receive is ... well, possibly it's social commentary, but also it's disturbing.
There were other disturbing things about the first act. The godfather, always a bit of a menace, is a much more sinister presence. I'd always read the family as bourgeois in a comfortable, homey way, but in this production they come off as rich. Their house is more imposing, their servants more numerous and submissive. The parents interact with their children less. Everyone's costumes are very bright. The godfather's son, who later becomes the Nutcracker and then the Prince, doesn't exist. And the whole first scene is replaced. In the NYCB production, Clara and Fritz are napping together while their parents decorate the tree in the other room. They wake up and took through the keyhole, excitedly watching the tree come to life. Their parents discover them and let them look at the tree before herding them off to dress for the party. This presents an idea of family affection and togetherness which makes the conflict that follows less unpleasant.
But in the ABT version, the first act starts with Clara and Fritz fighting and wreaking havoc with the cooks' party preparations, continues with the discovery of a mouse in the kitchen, and culminates with a troop of mice taking over the whole stage after the humans have left. These mice - who play an important part in the plot - are not the harmless, comical, paunchy mice of the NYCB version. They're adult-seeming, they wear suits, they dance like soldiers, and they are scary.
So the first act was not what I expected. There were interesting things the NYCB version doesn't have - the first scene was actually quite well done, the godfather is a much clearer figure, and there's a very nice effect involving an oversized chair - but it was a bit disconcerting. Still, I figured the second act has no plot and little action - it's just dancing - so it wouldn't be too much changed to an untrained eye like mine.
I was wrong. Everything was changed. There were some characters I hadn't seen before, and some familiar characters were changed almost beyond recognition. The costumes were different, which I expected, but I mean they were *really* different. They were... satirical. The order of the dances was changed around. But worst of all, the Sugar Plum Fairy - who in the NYCB version is a sort of fairy godmother - and her cavalier are, in the ABT version, a sort of future incarnation of Clara and the Prince. They seem to actually become these creatures, who are both in love with each other and trapped in a land that doesn't really exist. And then, when the play ends - this is the most heartbreaking moment - what is suppose to happen is that all the fairies have danced, and the Sugar Plum Fairy gives them her special blessing, and they fly away on a sled drawn by reindeer, back home where it is Christmas morning. But what happens in this version is that Sugar Plum Clara and the grown-up Prince dance their sad duet, and then Clara wakes up in bed, alone, and the Nutcracker is just a doll, and it was all a dream, and Herr Whatever His Name Is looks through the window and laughs as Clara sobs into her pillow, and you forget that actually it's Christmas morning.
I don't want to say I didn't like this production. It was interesting and well-executed and never boring. It was probably very smart, too. I'm told ABT productions are. But I felt like it was, well, *too* smart. It seemed to be taking the piss out of the real (by which I mean Balanchine) Nutcracker story, and even more of Christmas itself. I know as a Jewish person I have limited knowledge of what Christmas is about, but I'm pretty sure it's not about taking the piss out of things. In fact, to me Christmas *is* the Balanchine Nutcracker - joy and family and, yes, consumerism, lights and snow and pretty colors and uncritical wonderment. The fantasy that the world is, underneath, beautiful and magical, that there's a part of reality where everyone is special and loved, that every little girl can access this reality, and that when the world seems most terrifying - the tree grows, the mice stage a battle against you and your toys - you're just one brave act (throwing a shoe, in this case) away from discovering the hidden beauty of everything. But the ABT version seems to be exactly the opposite: life may seem to be harmless parties and present-giving, but beneath this is a roiling terror of class warfare and undisciplined fears and unknown hatreds; sexual maturity and the attendant politics are inevitable; even your fantasies can provide no escape. All of this is perhaps true, and in some ways it's very impressive what ABT has done, how terrifying they've made a ballet that I always thought was delicate and childlike. It's not a bad show. But it's not a good Nutcracker.
