New Adventures’ inspired production of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker! returns to Edinburgh. Read more …
This delicious theatrical feast has family sized helpings of Matthew Bourne’s trademark wit, pathos and magical fantasy. Nutcracker! follows Clara’s bittersweet journey from a bleak night at Dr. Dross’ Orphanage for waifs and strays, through a shimmering, ice-skating, winter wonderland to the scrumptious candy kingdom of Sweetieland.
Tchaikovsky’s glorious score and Olivier Award-winning designer, Anthony Ward’s unforgettable sets and costumes combine with sizzling choreography to create a fresh, hip and charmingly irreverent interpretation of a traditional favourite.
Matthew Bourne and New Adventures have achieved worldwide success with imaginative new stagings of popular classics such as Swan Lake, The Car Man, Cinderella and Edward Scissorhands. His work on the hit musical, Mary Poppins won him his fifth Olivier Award and he co-directed the West End smash hit Oliver!
This is a sumptuous, engaging ballet, with all the elements present and correct, from imaginative scenery to bright, seductive costumes and beautiful, athletic dancers.
It’s delicious fun served up with boundless energy and finesse.
What sets this Nutcracker! apart is Bourne’s use of clever characterisation, stylish costumes and a blend of ballet, contemporary and musical-theatre-style dancing that’s accessible to the core.
There’s a blissful throwing away of the rulebook here wiping from your memory all the over iced saccharine productions of the past, replacing them with something altogether more life affirming and fun.
Gleefully dark and incessantly inventive, this is ballet to makes you laugh out loud and cheer.
This revival has come up brighter than ever, with strong performances from the whole cast.
Bourne has a rare knack for keeping his productions fresh, and it's hard to believe that this Nutcracker is now 19 years old.
There is no denying the spirited energy of the company who deliver the rocking-horse romping, madly nodding heads and the hopping, skipping, jumping routines with bravura style and showbusiness panache.
Bourne is brilliant at the business of depicting character and telling stories through movement, and he deploys his ensembles with élan. But faced with the formal grandeur of music composed for classical pas de deux, he struggles.
This radical rethinking of a classic ballet is like a sherbet lemon in a sea of seasonal treacle: sharp, smart and tangy on the tongue.
Nutcracker! is trashy and ungiving. Humbug.
This remains a magnificent journey into the nightmares of reality and the possibilities of fantasy which reinvents ballet as it celebrates it, Matthew Bourne's revolutionary yet recognisable Nutcracker! is an ideal introduction to contemporary dance for the ballet beginner.
Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker
Nutcracker gets a reimagining
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh from Tuesday November 29, 2011, until Saturday December 3, 2011. More info: http://www.edtheatres.com/festival
King's Theatre, Glasgow from Tuesday February 21, 2012, until Saturday February 25, 2012. More info: www.theambassadors.com/kings/
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