The first complete performance outside Russia took place in England in 1934, staged by Nicholas Sergeyev after Petipa's original choreography. This not only introduced a love interest into the story by making Clara and the Prince adults, but provided the dancers portraying Clara and the Prince with more of an opportunity to participate in the dancing. In Russia, choreographer Alexander Gorsky staged a new version of the work in 1919 that addressed many of the criticisms of the original 1892 production by casting adult dancers in the roles of Clara and the Prince, rather than children. It may now be the most popular ballet in the world. The plot may not always hum with the clockwork precision of one of Drosselmeyer’s mechanical toys, but like a music box, it nevertheless plays a sweet tune.Miyako Yoshida and Steven McRae as the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier in a production of The Nutcracker by Peter Wright for The Royal Ballet (2009)Īlthough the original 1892 Marius Petipa production was not a success, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker began to slowly enjoy worldwide popularity after Balanchine first staged his production of it in 1954. In the end, “Nutcracker” is a delightfully old-school diversion. Otherwise, the action is all make-believe, involving, for the most part, toys with nonlethal weapons. Kudos to the special effects team that dreamed this thing up, but ew. The Mouse King, for instance, is a horse-size mouse-cloud made up of hundreds of squirming, normal-size rodents. “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” can be a little bit scary at times. There’s too much to look at.) A subplot involves Clara’s journey of self-discovery and feminist empowerment, a seemingly de rigueur plot point these days in every female-centric Disney offering from “Beauty and the Beast” to “A Wrinkle in Time.” In Powell’s screenplay, as in the ballet, a battle ensues among mice, tin soldiers, Clara, Philip and various others, but it is in service of an extraneous power struggle that doesn’t make much logical sense if you think about it too hard. In this telling, there is dissent among the regents, and Mirren’s character – known as Mother Ginger, a character from the ballet under whose voluminous skirts live a coterie of clowns – is presented as the villain. Grant, Eugenio Derbez and Helen Mirren, respectively). He introduces Clara to four realms: the lands of Sweets, Snowflakes, Flowers and Amusements, each one reigned over by a different regent (played to perfection by Keira Knightley, Richard E. There, she meets the film’s title character: a wooden nutcracker who has turned into a young soldier named Philip (Jayden Fowora-Knight). In this London-set version of the tale, when Clara wanders off in search of her present from Drosselmeyer, the key to a locked, ornate metal egg, she enters – via a “Narnia”-like magic portal – an alternate universe. The score, by James Newton Howard, also mixes in plentiful chunks of Tchaikovsky’s familiar music.Īs with most versions of the ballet, the story centers on a girl named Clara Stahlbaum (Mackenzie Foy) and opens at a Christmas Eve party that is attended by her father (Matthew Macfadyen) and godfather (Morgan Freeman), a toymaker of ingenious contrivances named Drosselmeyer. While doing little to advance the larger story, the beautiful dance sequences make for a delightful reminder of the film’s roots. That said, the movie also includes passages of simple ballet featuring Misty Copeland. What that means is a visual spectacle that is wildly imaginative, dazzling and, more often than not, charming, harnessed to a screenplay (by Ashleigh Powell) that pads out the slender, dreamlike fable at its heart with an at times needlessly busy narrative that evokes “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Chronicles of Narnia” and, at its most extravagant, Cirque du Soleil. Otherwise, the film, a mix of live action and CGI, is, for better and for worse, pure Disney. Hoffmann’s 1816 fantasy story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” and the two-act ballet – now a staple of Christmastime entertainment – that is based on it. In its broadest parameters, Disney’s “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” hews only loosely to its source materials: German writer E.T.A.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |