The world premier of Scottish Ballet’s The Nutcracker, choreographed by Ashley Page, took place at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre in 2003. It is now three years since its last outing, revived for this Christmas season by Page’s successor, recently-appointed Artistic Director, Christopher Hampson.
Set in Germany in the early 1920’s, this represents an era of severe austerity measures introduced by a government desperate to address the dismally weak economy (sound familiar?), while simultaneously being incontestably regarded as one of the most fertile grounds for the emergence of new arts movements in history (we can but hope!). The contradictions contained within the Weimar Republic provide a disturbingly appropriate vessel in which to house the dark fantasy and frivolity of this incredible ballet.
Conceived by Ashley Page and Antony McDonald, this retelling of ETA Hoffman’s tale, ‘Nutcracker and the King if Mice’, moves with the surreal quality of dreams. Images summoning the glamour and exotic beauty of 1920’s fashionable chic mingle amongst darkly violent images evoking the German Expressionist Movement, which focused on the more sinister aspects of the human psyche.
Consistent with this was the clever use of the devices of scale and colour that were employed to great effect: the crudely-drawn head of the giant mouse that mauls and curses the baby princess; the grotesquely large baby’s head that then lurches out of its averagely-sized pram; the 15-foot hand holding a pocket watch that contains the magical creator of the Nutcracker doll and all of this in colours ranging and changing from black, white and grey, through gentle lilacs and soft opals through to luminous pink and bilious green.
The story itself is concluded early in Act 2, the remainder of this consistently contradictory ballet comprising the irrelevant but integral ‘divertissment’. It is here that the orchestra and dancers really get to show off and they, respectively, made the complexity of Tchaikovsky’s score and the physicality and technicality of the original Petipa choreography, appear sublime and effortless.
Following the brilliant uneasy queasiness of the menacing tale, it was sheer joy to revel in the skill of the performers, while unconsciously humming along to more than a few of the most renowned and timeless pieces of music in classical ballet.
Runs til 12 January 2013