… I’m here to opine about The Nutcracker.

I realized recently that I’d never seen this classic Christmas story and set out to rectify that gap in my education. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I was able to do so, and ended up watching a performance put on by the Ukrainian National Ballet a few years ago, with a Wikipedia article at my metaphorical elbow to explain the plot.

Let me tell you, that thing was trippy as heck. I’d vaguely known that the story is about a young girl who gets a magic nutcracker doll for Christmas, it turns into a prince, and they have some sweet- pun intended- adventures before she either returns home or wakes up and wonders if it was all a dream.

But that’s all I knew about the story. I’d forgotten about the Mouse King- and, sidebar, that guy’s performance was excellent. I kept expecting him to stumble because part of his costume included a gray cloak that kept tangling around his ankles, but he’s a professional athlete, and little details like that didn’t seem to impair him. He was also quite creepy, an excellent villain who was defeated halfway through the story. It made a good climatic moment for Act I, but there was still half the show to go, which puzzled me.

And there wasn’t an obvious climax to Act II, unless you count the moment Clara wakes up in her home and sees the nutcracker doll, which took about ten seconds in this performance. The story, just, sort of, ended. Very weird.

But it only ended after a variety of dances meant to symbolize coffee, tea, chocolate, and the other sweets that live in the fairy kingdom. Say what? Now I’m wondering if the idea for Candyland came from the same recesses of the human mind. And it’s funny to think that portal fiction has been around for so long; apparently, isekai isn’t a new trend, it’s a continuation of an old multi-national tradition.

The portrayal of Clara was also interesting- she’s supposed to be a young girl, specific age not given, but the prince who accompanies her on her adventures is very obviously a love interest. Those two things shouldn’t go together, and I’m sure lots of academics have spilled lots of ink discussing Victorian ideas of childhood and growing up and how they relate to Clara’s dream of an adulthood that includes a handsome prince and a kingdom populated by candy, and her subsequent awakening back in her childhood.

There’s a lot of room for variation in adaptations for the stage, and one other thing that made my write brain go, ‘hmm…’ was their portrayal of Drosselmeyer the magician. He was a very dark, seductive presence at the party in Act I, and I kept expecting him to show up as the Big Boss villain at the end- remember, my knowledge of the plot was vague, and the article I was using to follow the plot said there are a lot of variations on the original story. But Drosselmeyer never showed up again, and I was left scratching my head a bit.

Another trippy bit was the costumes. They were beautiful. But everyone was dressed in Georgian style- think American Revolution. Powdered wigs and knee breeches for the gentlemen, big wide skirts for the ladies. For a story that’s set in the 1820s, fifty years after the style shown on the stage. My best guess is that Georgian style looks more glamorous, and is also easier to dance in, so the costumer and director made A Choice.

My final assessment of The Nutcracker is: beautiful to look at, lovely music, very weird plot. I’m glad I filled this gap in my education, and maybe next year I’ll watch another performance of the story and compare it to this one.

Happy Boxing Day, all!