Music: Pyotyr Ilych Tchaikovsky
Director: David Bintley
David Bentley’s reworking of Peter Wright’s 1990 production is a sumptuous, large-scale take on one of the loveliest ballets ever written. It’s warmly imaginative too. At one point the whole of the Albert Hall’s massive organ frontage becomes, through projection, a huge fireplace and Drosselmeyer is now a toymaker whose mechanical toys come to life in Act 2.
Birmingham Sinfonia is positioned on a raised platform, above the main performance space, in front of the organ console. This results in impressive musical clarity. And the placing of the lower strings in the middle, rather than to conductor Paul Murphy’s right, means that lines in Tchaikovsky’s stunning score, which are usually lost, come sailing through the texture. The passage just before the key change when everyone leaves the ballroom is, for example, breathtaking. The brass section, moreover, sitting very unusually at the front behind second violins to Murphy’s right, plays splendidly especially with the piccolo in the big Act 2 pas-de-deux.
And so to the action on the stage below. Bintley makes fine use of the huge playing area and ensures plenty of spectacle, menace and magic in Act 1 along with some entertaining rats. Projection on side screens sweeps the action into The Kingdom of Sweets in which the set pieces delight both Clara, whose dream this is, and the audience. The very slow tempo and the triangular shapes make the Arabian Dance seem especially mysterious, the muscular Cossack dance is a riot of colourful movement and the Chinese dance, behind which bassoon and flute duet arrestingly, is a sparky contrast. The Waltz of the Flowers, preceded by an immaculately played harp solo, swings along with joyful precision. Clara is not just an onlooker in her dream either. She is repeatedly drawn temporarily into the action she’s watching and it’s an idea which works well.
If you want a respectful, quite traditional but gloriously fresh Nutcracker you are unlikely to find better than this show – with two relatively minor caveats. First, Drosselmeyer is voiced – yes, voiced – several times by Simon Callow in a cod German (or is it meant to be Russian?) accent and it’s gratingly gratuitous. A ballet as fine as this does not need a verbal commentary. The music and action tell the story perfectly. They need no assistance. Second, there is far more noise and echo from balletic feet on the temporary stage floor at the Royal Albert Hall than there should be. Technicians, designers and sound engineers really should have found ways of reducing this.
Runs Until 31 December.
The Reviews Hub Score:
Music, magic and menace
