At the beginning of Matthew Bourne’s vivid reinterpretation of The Nutcracker, the cast wander on to the stage and gaze wide-eyed at the audience. Their anticipation and wonder sum up the magic of the season. A treat is in store.
Bourne’s rethinking, which starts in Dr Dross’s orphanage and ends up in Sweetieland, is now 30 years old but more clever and shiny than ever, full of witty detail. Anthony Ward’s designs gleam with imagination: grey tiled walls open up into a white landscape full of skaters, and then into the pink excess of a sugar dream crowned with a tilting wedding cake.
Through these, Cordelia Braithwaite’s graceful, good-hearted Clara makes her journey, thwarted in life and in dreams by the malicious Sugar (Ashley Shaw), who steals the Nutcracker (Harrison Dowzell, first a lurching ventriloquist’s doll, then a handsome prince) by sheer sensual ambition. They are surrounded by a brilliant array of characters including a humbug bouncer, the glamorous, skittering Marshmallow Girls, and two Cupids in pyjamas, whose blindness is a real problem.
It’s all beautifully danced, full of glorious invention, mining Tchaikovsky’s music (here played live) with an understanding of its expansiveness, but also a feeling for the melancholy longing that runs under its great melodies. It’s one of Bourne’s best. Blissful.
On screen, another darker fairy story is reimagined by the BalletBoyz (Michael Nunn and William Trevitt), director Richard Jones and movement director Sarah Fahie, in an adventurous new silent film of Rumpelstilzchen. This spare telling of the Grimm brothers’ tale of a strange creature who turns straw into gold in return for the promise of a baby unfolds through telling gestures to David Sawer’s unsettling score.
The cast, including an unrecognisable Jane Horrocks as Rumpelstilzchen and Tanya Reynolds (Lily in Sex Education) as the put-upon daughter, bring the whole thing to life with the urgency of their emotion. It’s oddly discomfiting but fascinating to see.
Star ratings (out of five)
Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker! ★★★★★
Rumpelstilzchen ★★★★
Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker! is at Sadler’s Wells, London, until 30 January and touring until 23 April
Rumpelstilzchen is on Curzon Cinemas, Sky Arts and Freeview
