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Director
and
Choreographer Matthew
Bourne
Designer
Anthony Ward
Music
Tchaikovsky
Performed by
The Royal
Philharmonic
Concert Orchestra |
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Sadler's Wells
20
November - 25 January 2003 |
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There
are currently three productions of the
Nutcracker
in London alone this Christmas but Matthew
Bourne's show with his company New Adventures
has to be the most refreshingly original.
Audiences will know Matthew Bourne from
his most celebrated success in 1995
of Swan Lake,
in which the swans are a flock of men.
His version of Nutcracker!
was first performed ten years ago when
Matthew Bourne was a young maverick
with a good line in parody, but this
is a fresh new production with different
costumes and choreography. His original
collaboration with Andrew Ward, the
designer, has stayed the same and some
of the original cast are also still
with the show. This is no gooey, cloying
Christmas pudding of a show though,
Nutcracker!
is a deliciously light and frothy confection,
a touching, camped-up and joyous combination
of ballet, rock and roll, aerobics,
jive and disco.
Expectations
of a fantasy party-piece are confounded
in Act I, which opens with a bleak monochrome
Victorian orphanage, as each child (all
played by adults) troupes on stage in
innocent wonder for the annual Christmas
party. The scene is presided over by
the wonderfully wicked Dr Dross, who
children will recognise as a Child Catcher-type
figure from Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang, complete with
long SS style leather coat and waxed
moustache. There are bittersweet moments
when the Christmas presents are handed
out only to be snatched back again when
the visiting governors leave and Bourne's
non-verbal storytelling is wonderful.
As in the best fantasies, however, the
children get the better of the grown-ups
and the set practically splits in two
as the orphans make their escape to
Sweetieland.
One after
another of Andrew Ward's outrageously
inventive sets follow in Act II with
more than a nod to Buzby Berkeley in
the final wedding cake scene. It is
in Act II that Matthew Bourne's real
exuberance and talent flowers giving
us an oriental dance sequence between
Clara and the lewd Knickerbocker Glory
which is as sensuous and languid as
a Matisse odalisque; there are references
to Frederick Ashton's La
Fille Mal Gardee in one of the
dance routines; and to show he has not
lost his subversive touch all the dancers
in Sweetieland are licking one another.
The only criticism would be that at
times the theatricalities got in the
way of the music but it was a small
price. Visually, this production is
a dream, girls will adore the Grace
Kelly-like Princess Sugar in her gorgeous
Barbie-pink girl's fantasy dress, the
dizzy Marshmallow It-girls, and the
bad, yobbish, biker boys The Gobstoppers.
Bourne's
show is accessible and fun, fun, fun.
Although some of the jokes will be understood
by and are aimed more at adults than
children, seeing a production such as
this with a child is pure joyousness;
fathers, brothers as well as mothers
and daughters will love Nutcracker.
Louise
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