Pinocchio
Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, London WC2
The Nutcracker
English National Ballet, Coliseum, London WC2
It is a joy to find dance productions at this time of year that aren't drenched in nostalgia for long-lost childhood. Family-friendly though Pinocchio and The Nutcracker may be, the original stories on which they're based are dark and troubling, which is why they have endured. Pre-Freudian writers of children's tales had no qualms about conjuring up scary nightmares and awful moral fates. But over the years, staged versions (and Disney films) have made the past a safer, sweeter place.
William Tuckett's new Pinocchio, however, by-passes the Disney animated film and returns to the 1883 book, adapted by children's writer Phil Porter. The result is much less cuddly than Tuckett's previous festive show, The Wind in the Willows, created for the Linbury in 2002. That had a wistful narrative about the passing of the seasons, youth, life itself. Pinocchio presents childhood as a state of natural anarchy, ruled over by arbitrary adults often up to no good.
The story is told in a semi-nonsensical Eyetalian language, spoken and sung, while much of the action is danced. Martin Ward's score, played on stage, evokes Italian folk tunes, a fairground hurdy-gurdy, a low-life jazz band. The music tends to drown out the words, leaving younger children (and plenty of adults) somewhat in the dark. But the ingenious sets by the Quay Brothers encourage everyone to use their imaginations and see the world through Pinocchio's curious eyes.
He's the wooden puppet who emerges from a tree trunk when old man Geppetto lops off a branch. Matthew Hart's Pinocchio is a perilous innocent, a hazard to himself and others around him. His wonky limbs seem to hinge in any direction, as wayward as his sense of what's right or wrong. Geppetto tries to steer him on to the straight and narrow, assisted by the Blue Fairy, who acts as his conscience.
Like Tinkerbell, she's a self-righteous pain, her reproaches spoken in voiceover, while the rest of the cast speak for themselves. Cathy Marston's Fairy is as bearable as can be, zipping around on her spangled scooter and exposing Pinocchio's unfamiliarity with the truth.
His nose really does grow longer when he tells lies. He betrays Geppetto's trust by bunking off school and getting involved in puppet master Stromboli's nefarious schemes. Luke Heydon is a lovably eccentric Geppetto, Will Kemp a dastardly, scene-stealing manipulator of toys and boys. Bloated with bombast, his Stromboli is finally deflated by Pinocchio, who pricks his swollen stomach with a splintery finger.
Tuckett is excellently served by his cast of dance-actors, including Tom Sapsford as a flea-bitten cat and Charlotte Broom as the vixen who lures donkey-boys to a bad end in a glue factory. Inventive choreography brings the characters vividly to life, with a show-stopping ensemble number in the second half. The bumpier bits in the first half should be ironed out by the time Pinocchio goes on tour, after its Linbury run ends on Saturday. It will be shown on BBC4 next Sunday at 7.20pm.
Gerald Scarfe's designs for The Nutcracker turn English National Ballet's current production, concluding its fourth year today, into a pop-up picture book. His is a caricaturist's fantasy of a child's world, where everyone is peculiar. In the first-act party, demented Grandpa lusts after pneumatic Miss V Aggra; a plume-haired general consorts with a bishop's elephantine wife; the maid turns into a vamp and Clara's hooligan brother, Fritz, risks having an Asbo slapped on him.
Clara is a mini-ballerina whose white, satin pyjamas keep her girlish once her adventures start. She's unfazed by the battle between insurgent mice in gasmasks and paratrooper commandos; her unorthodox home life has prepared her for anything. Why shouldn't snowflakes erupt out of the fridge or an origami bird transport her and the ex-Nutcracker to the Sugar Plum Fairy's chocolate-box kingdom?
I've come round to this entertainingly irrational production, after disliking it at first for its heartlessness. Christopher Hampson, who choreographed and staged it, has followed Scarfe's lead in outlawing sentimentality. They have conspired to turn Drosselmeyer, the magician in charge of the story, into Clara's Doctor Who, taking her on a thrilling journey and, in this version, not returning her home. She's happy to leave childhood behind her, with no regrets. The company have, meanwhile, kept their spirits high, dancing in fine form during the transition period between Matz Skoog's departure as artistic director and Wayne Eagling's arrival.
The New Year marks my departure as The Observer's dance critic, after nearly a quarter of a century and more than a thousand columns. During that period, I've heralded the start to many a dancer's career and watched their development with great pleasure: Darcey Bussell and Jonathan Cope, who retire this season, are among those I first predicted would be stars when I saw their Royal Ballet School graduation performances back in the Eighties. Both are English, while ballet and contemporary dance have become increasingly international over the past two decades. Dancers and companies now flock to Britain from all over the world, thanks to vastly improved conditions for performers and audiences. Old theatres have at last been modernised and new ones built, along with bigger and better rehearsal spaces.
But we're still hoping for creative geniuses to match those of the last century, like Ashton, Balanchine, Graham and MacMillan, whose work I was lucky enough to see while they were still in charge of how they were presented. Let's hope another golden age is yet to come.
