Nutcracker!

My head is now spinning with Nutcrackers but Matthew Bourne's take, "Nutcracker!" is a sufficiently delightful spin that I came out more than grinning. Filled with larger than life characters in Zany costumes, it's a visual dream and has just enough heart to make it more than just a pretty picture.

Bourne's reinvention is much in line with all his other ballets, narrative heavy without actually making much sense. Clara now lives in a grim Dickensian orphanage run by the nasty Dr Dross (think Drosselmeyer and then think again), and his similarly mean family. On Christmas Eve some inexplicable magic occurs and Clara is taken on a journey to "Sweetieland" that eventually leads to her escaping to a better life. Without Drosselmeyer or any discernable source of magic, it's not really clear quite why the Nutcracker (who isn't a Nutcracker but a doll) comes alive at all, but no matter. It's a weird, funny, surprising show, each scene making sense at the time though taken as a whole I was left scratching my head.

This isn't a problem because Bourne packages the whole thing in his usual extremely compelling choreography. Every step is created in the service of story, even the more conventional duets pull the narrative forward in some shape or form. His team of dancers do fine work in bringing this vision to life. The angular choreography for the horrible children is spectacularly well taken by Chloe Wilkinson and Dominic North. North's grimace of a smile sent shivers down my spine. Hannah Vassalo's brilliantly danced Clara didn't really convince as a young girl in an orphanage, but this may have been deliberate as it made some of the more oversexed later scenes seem more appropriate.

A lovely evening that captures the spirit and the magic of the Nutcracker whilst fashioning it into something new and different. If you like Bourne you'll probably like this and if you've never come across Bourne before you'll probably like this to!

(Review of Performance on Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at Sadler's Wells)