Ballet that’s cracked Christmas
THE Nutcracker is to ballet what It’s a Wonderful Life is to the movies; a holiday staple with snow, hallucinatory worlds, good cheer and a Christmas tree. So last weekend I nipped over to Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre to catch Scottish Ballet’s firecracker of a Nutcracker.
It’s fashionable to be crabby about The Nutcracker but I’m not sure that its popularity is any worse than choirs offering Handel’s Messiah, or another version of A Christmas Carol on screen. It puts ticketpurchasing people in the seats and if one production can pay the bills for several months’ worth of dance, music and art, where is the harm?
Besides, The Nutcracker is easy to love. Instead of dancing peasants and royal courts, it’s a child’s-eye story about a Christmas party and a dream about fighting giant mice before being whisked off to a Kingdom of Sweets to meet a Sugar Plum Fairy (Sophie Martin).
While most of our stories are about losing innocence or paradise in some form, Nutcracker offers innocence preserved and paradise discovered.
Choreography is devised by Scottish Ballet founder Peter Darrell, with aunties prowling the party swooping on kids and fare while an uncle performs magical tricks with the panache of Paul Daniels.
It’s as rich and toothsome as Christmas cake, even if it gets us no closer to answering the question: who would give a child a nutcracker as a Christmas present?