Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker 2022 - Review

I remember being giddy with excitement as I held my ticket for Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker. Bourne’s production is a reimaging of Petipa’s ballet with all magic of Tchaikovsky’s score.

In Petipa’s ballet, Clara is attending her family’s Christmas party where she is gifted a Nutcracker from the elusive magician Drosselmeyer. At midnight, she enters a fantastical version of her living room where mice battle with soldiers. The Nutcracker leads them and it’s Clara who overcomes the Mouse King. Clara and her Nutcracker then travel through the Land of the Snowflakes to the Land of Sweets where they recount their adventure to the Sugar Plum Fairy, her Prince and their guests, the flowers and sweets. In thanks to Clara for saving the Nutcracker celebration, Clara and the Nutcracker are crowned as the new King and Queen of the Land of Sweets.

Bourne’s Nutcracker doesn’t start so sweet. Clara, played by Cordelia Braithwaite, is an orphan in a drab, grey orphanage. The institution is run by Dr and Mrs Dross, played by Danny Reubens and Daisy May Kemp, who are very austere characters and seem only to care about appearances. They host a Christmas party for the orphans only to impress the governors who are visiting. The orphans largely dance together in pairs, performing jumps and turns around each other. It feels very childlike but fun. They even make a galloping tunnel where they all duck under arms.

Mr and Mrs Dross have two extremely spoilt children, Sugar and Fritz, played by Dominic North and Ashley Shaw, who have their parents’ mean streak. Iconic pieces of the score are used to showcase what the orphans do while in the Dross’ care. The orphans clean using white cloths, which are wafted around in flurries, dancing around Mrs Dross. Then it is Dr Dross’ turn to have the orphans perform what seems to be a PE class, they use hula hoops and skipping ropes. Bourne’s choreography always demands power from his company and this will also be evident later in the performance.

Depending on who’s dancing, Bourne’s choreography have different styles and motifs. Clara, I would say has the most classical technique out of everyone. The Dross’ style is off-kilter, kicking legs into the air with flexed feet or wiggling their bottoms to the audience. Sugar and Fritz have a more classical style with a camp flair, almost sugary sweet with their heads bobbing and picking up their feet; petulant too. With her headdress, Sugar looks a bit like Minnie Mouse.

The governors bring out toys and Clara finds a doll that she becomes very attached as she plays with it with her friend at the orphanage who she also has a crush on. The doll is taken away after the party is over. The doll for this Nutcracker I’ve always found disconcerting as it’s a ventriloquist doll. It’s put away in a cupboard before we see everyone heading to bed and all decorations and Christmas tree have been thrown out of the window. After everyone is asleep, Clara wakes to rescue her doll but to her surprise he’s now human sized. I won’t lie: I found this absolutely terrifying but that’s because I don’t like dolls. The Nutcracker’s movements feel plastic too, having to use his whole body to turn, which intensified my fear.

He does create a hole in the orphanage wall which allows the children to muster the courage to fight the Dross’ for all their terrible treatment. It feels like a rebellion with lots of things happening all at once, the Dross’ are taken away on the beds one by one before the Nutcracker defeats Dr Dross. The children are then able to escape.

Clara and the Nutcracker, who is no longer a doll, played by Harrison Dowzell (who also plays the orphan Clara has a crush on), share a pas de deux. I would compare it to the classical duet but lifts are much closer and intimate between dancers, with Braithwaite’s legs wrapped round Dowzell’s torso. It feels more flirtatious and curious, like that of a first love than a classical pas de deux where that feels more like an all-encompassing fairy-tale love. Part way through Braithwaite and Dowzell’s duet, other members of the male cast enter, all topless. They lift their arms above their heads and pose, showing off the prowess and virtuosity of the male form. This is didn’t surprise me, knowing the direction Bourne took for his adaptation of Swan Lake.

We transition to the Frozen Pond which has replaced the Land of the Snowflakes. I’m hit with the wave of GCSE nostalgia where I had to learn some of the choreography at school. The company glide along the floor as if they’re ice skating with flexed feet in their arabesques. In partners, they perform lifts which make it look like they’re appearing over snowy hills. They stand in attitudes were the women shake their skirts to make it look as if they’re skating through the wind. It feels like they’re frolicking through the wintry landscape. They’re joined with Shaw and Reubens, which in this fantasy land they’re now Princess Sugar and Prince Bon-Bon. Princess Sugar sets her sights on the Nutcracker and she has Prince Bon-Bon hit him with a giant snowball, confusing him. He ends up mesmerised by Princess Sugar and Clara is left alone by the end of Act One.

Throughout all of Act 2, the stage’s chequered floor and brightly coloured backdrops force the audience’s perspective, as if looking into a zany, sugar-coated snow globe. The costumes reflect this as well, dressing like actual sweets.

Act Two begins with Clara stuck between the Frozen Pond and Sweetieland and two angels take it upon themselves to help her get to Sweetlieland. They perform in a quick, classical style that is slightly more angular. Clara is then at the door to Sweetieland but she’s kept out by the humbug bouncer. Clara needs an invite to enter. Guests begin to arrive, starting with the liquorice allsorts who dance flamenco to Tchaikovsky’s Spanish Dance also known as Chocolate. The trio dance together, one female dancer and two male, the female dancer is playful with her male dancers while predominately creating percussion with their feet and their arms above their heads.

They’re followed by the Knickerbocker Glory, played by Jonathan Luke Baker, who dances to the Arabian Dance sometimes known as Coffee. There’s a nod to the dance’s origins with the character’s harem pants. Baker is masterful in the role, as this interpretation is all about temptation and vice, his movements ooze, wrapping himself around Clara, trying to entice her. The Knickerbocker Glory reminds me of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, due to the smoking and undulating movement. (When I initially thought this, I hadn’t made the connection to Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice Adventures in Wonderland). When Clara doesn’t give in to temptation, he leaves her outside the door.

Marshmallows enter the stage to the Tea Dance, sometimes known as the Chinese Dance. They’re very frothy with feathers fluttering on their skirts and matching headdresses. Their movements are very light and bouncy, opting to tiptoe from foot to foot instead of walking. The show off their invites with flagrant disregard. Clara tries to hide in the middle of them as they enter the door but she’s stopped by the bouncer once again.

Next are the Gobstoppers which are very colourful, masculine bikers, who dance to the Russian Dance. They leap onto the stage with an abundance of energy. The dancers roll along the floor, jump into the air. They’re meant to represent stereotypical masculinity by the way they are a bit “rough and tumble” with each other. They punch air, hip thrust the air and pretend as if they’re on their motorbikes. The trio end up in a fight which then the bouncer has to break up, giving Clara the opportunity to sneak in.

What is really interesting about this section of the production is Bourne’s willingness to have a family-friendly ballet not shy away from more adult themes and jokes. We know how the Knickerbocker Glory was trying to tempt Clara and how the Gobstoppers perform their satire of masculinity.

Princess Sugar enters the stage and Shaw’s performance is slick with the spoilt meter turned up to the max, but she has such charisma that she really sinks her teeth into the role. She feels like more of the main character than just the antagonist. Princess Sugar surveys the audience with a knowing look, having ensnared the Nutcracker and she’s getting what she wants. She performs to the Dance of the Flowers with the vapid Marshmallows, where the sweets are simply there to boost her ago. Mean Girls style. Dancers transition between various tableaus of them showing off their garments or Princess Sugar proving how conceited she is. There’s even a moment where she shows her claws to one of her frenemies. Bourne shows that pink is a bad colour through Princess Sugar contrasting Clara’s white and blue.

Clara and the angels sneak further into Sweetieland and Clara narrowly misses being caught but Prince Bon-Bon brings the angels to Princess Sugar. Her victorious solo reminds of when Ursula disguises herself as Vanessa to curse Eric in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

Danny Reubens and Daisy May Kemp return in this act to play Princess Sugar and Prince Bon-Bon’s parents, King Sherbert and Queen Candy, where they insist on the Princess Sugar and the Nutcracker getting married. A wall lifts to reveal a giant cake with all the sweeties decorating the cake on various layers. It is an absolute feat of set design by Anthony Ward. It’s ginormous, four layers of pink perfection. Dancers celebrate the match by flitting between taking swipes of the cake to taste or tasting themselves. This is most apparent when Prince Bon-Bon undulates at the audience, making absurd faces while touching himself.

It feels like satire of over consumption, all-you-can-eat of sweet things and vices. All the sweets stretch their arms wide to scoop into everything to eat.

The Nutcracker and Princess Sugar share a pas de deux and it feels sticky, fake and absurd with the words “True Love” plastered above them when this has all been masterminded by Princess Sugar. She teases him with a kiss and it feels like the Nutcracker is her trophy so that she can shine brighter with him in her possession. The lifts they share show her off, showing how fake it all is. She seduces him as they move on the floor together. She sees Clara observing them and the Princess smirks, knowing that she’s won.

It's reminiscent of the climax during Swan Lake where the Prince is fooled by Odile’s disguise and Odette can only look on as her heart-breaks.

The wedding approaches and the camera lingers on the farce that is the ornament of a bride and groom on top of the wedding cake. They’re married by the King and Queen when all the sweeties start to taste the Nutcracker, lingering on the theme of consumption. When the Nutcracker and Princess Sugar have a moment alone you wonder what type of debauchery is coming next but Clara enters which causes a fight between her and Princess Sugar. They’re both in mirrored duets with the Nutcracker and Prince Bon-Bon where they move around each other and twist and swap partners with Clara hoping that the Nutcracker will recognise her. He does, with more and more of his focus going to Clara. The dance is light with lifts and turns and formations changing in a blink. There’s always something to follow. There’s another celebratory sequence with all the sweeties dancing together but Princess Sugar seems to win.

Clara falls asleep, and when she wakes, she has returned to the orphanage with the doll back in her hands. Princess Sugar and Sweetieland were all a dream. She finds her crush, also played by Dowzell, in her bed, who does recognise her and they escape the orphanage together with the Nutcracker doll.

I do enjoy Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker because it is truly a feast for the eyes, particularly with the second act. I love the characterization of all the sweets and Princess Sugar. I love the choreography, performed with such ease. But the end of the story has always confused me because Clara and the Nutcracker don’t share a victorious, romantic pas de deux to end their journey together. Much of the plot takes place in Act 2 with Princess Sugar doing most of the heavy lifting and Act 1 is only to demonstrate how sad Clara’s life is, that leads her to have the dream of Sweetieland. Having said that, it would be a wonderful family outing as its more pantomime than that of a classical ballet.

CINEMA SHOWING: MATTHEW BOURNE’S NUTCRACKER

TUESDAY 15TH NOV 2022, CORN EXCHANGE NEWBURY