reviewing reviewing

Though I'm semi-retired from criticism these days, I did want to spotlight a brilliant production that I just saw ... more than a decade late.

I'm referring to Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker!, a vivid, sexy, dangerous version of the old Tchaikovsky chestnut that I caught some of, and ended up DVRing, on the Ovation Channel. (I'd never heard of that station, either; the title of the show caught my eye while channel-surfing.)

Now, I'm not really a fan of "the dance" - it's pretty, but it often takes a long time to tell a short story. (Side note: My husband laughs at the fact that, when I watch musicals, I'll fast-forward through the dance sequences at the FF speed where you can see everything but it moves more rapidly. I have no patience for movement in real time.) In particular, I don't care for modern dance. Any time I see print ads for Alvin Ailey et al., with beautiful lithe people wrapped in skin tone spandex and wrapped around each other, I gawk at their nude-ish hard bodies and turn the page.

However, The Nutcracker has always held a special place in my heart. My mother took me to see it every year, for the better part of my childhood, at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, NJ. I used to be able to hear a musical phrase and know what was going on during the performance. During those years I was also taking dance classes, and performed in the Mother Ginger and her children sequence in one of my recitals. Despite the fact that I did (and do) lack physical fluidity and grace, I dreamed of playing Clara. Fortunately, we figured out that my talents lay in acting, and not dance, and so my hopes were never dashed, but displaced.

Having a thorough knowledge and intense fondness for the Balanchine way of nutcracking makes one appreciate the novelty of Matthew Bourne's version. As they say (and say and say), this ain't yo grandma's Nutcracker. This isn't your little girl's version, either. It's very dark, sensual, and sad. It requires more emotions that you're used to expressing during this (usually) frothy piece, but the performers meet you halfway by providing their own. -Now, the term "performers" really has to be used here because to refer to them simply as "dancers" would undervalue the emoting that goes on even in the secondary roles.

The camerawork helps you to appreciate and connect as well, with gratuitous and judicious use of close-ups to make you forget that you're watching a performance on a proscenium stage on your television set. The editing is invisible in the sense that it's so good it goes unnoticed.

Instead of a bourgeois drawing room filled with present-hungry tykes in Christmas finery, the show opens on an orphanage filled with attention-hungry teens dressed in dingy white shifts. Clara is not the star of the show, but, in fact, struggles to be heard, even in her own dream. And this dream is no snow-dappled, candy-colored, girly dream of royal courts and exotic performers. This is a sticky wet dream of cool confections draping themselves in limbs and licking the sweet off each other. There is a wedding, but it's not the one you'd hope for - unless you're rooting for Clara's rival, Princess Sugar, who snags Clara's man/Nutcracker. (Don't worry, things look up once Clara wakes up.)

In the dream world of Sweetieland, the costuming is just as dazzling as the dancing. Over-the-top colors and silhouettes are used, from a trio of Gobstoppers that are a cross between Vyvyan from The Young Ones and the mod bikers of Quadrophenia (they performed during the Russian dance) to a gaggle of pink-fringed society ladies that bob along hilariously to the Chinese Tea dance. The gentleman performing the Arabian dance wears a slick suit and a cherry on top - that is, his hair is a dollop of vanilla soft-serve with a maraschino kicker.

And then there's the dancing. It was a mash-up of balletic, modern, and frenetic movement that blended together so naturally, and was so tailored to the characters, and was telling the story! Everything was so precise, but there was no calculated feel to it. I fear that I lack the proper vocabulary to do it justice. The highest praise that I can bestow is that it was purposeful, revealed plot and characterization, and I didn't fast-forward once!

If you're interested in checking it out, there are clips on Matthew Bourne's website for the production. You can also buy it on Amazon, or maybe catch it on the Ovation Channel if you have Time Warner Cable.

-Don't worry, I'm sure the next post will be all about the baby again. ;)