After Christmas Nutcrackers

If you didn't watch all the Nutcrackers on Ovation before Christmas, (and you're not sick of it), you might try watching three very different versions of the work that are either delightful, moving, funny, or insane. (Yeah, insane. We'll get to that one.)

The funny one would be Mark Morris's A Hard Nut. It is continually inventive and wonderfully childlike in its cleverness and wit--the costumes alone are funny--and is aimed at anyone who thinks they've seen the "original" too many times. (No one does the "original". They are all hybrids of more than one choreographer's work.) Just watch how the mice are killed. A joy for kids and adults. (Maybe not little little kids...but then neither is the original. All those murdered mice?)

The moving one is Matthew Bourne's The Nutcracker. As he did with Swan Lake, Bourne creates a new story that has allusions to the original story, but goes its own way and is hardly a Christmas story. In this version, children are left in a miserable orphanage where their spirits are so smashed they retreat into their imaginations. Act Two is like the version we know in that it is a divertissement consisting of solos and duets with new characters who come and go. But these are all objects like cakes and presents and ice cream cones. The end is quite a different experience from the standard one.

And then there is Maurice Bejart's version. You have to see it to believe it. It purports to tell the story of Bejart's life with a very Oedipal mother / son relationship, sex, violence, Diaghilev and a cat. For no particular reason, a cat. He seems to represent something, but I have no idea what that would be. And this is definitely not for children. Even some adults will be offended. It depends on your interest in an "I can't believe they've just done that" kind of production whether you'll enjoy it or not, but at least you can watch it any time of the year and never once be reminded of the holidays.

Needless to say, the dancing in all of these is exemplary (ever notice how the level of dancing in videos has a higher ratio of good to bad than opera videos?), the sets and costumes add to the experience of each (you have to love the giant sculpture in the Bejart) and the recordings are first class. See if you can rent one (or more ) of them. Maybe wait until you AREN'T sick of The Nutcracker.