BALLET REVIEW : Another ‘Nutcracker,’ Thanks to the Joffrey

We have another “Nutcracker.” Some people just can’t get enough of a profitable thing. Drosselmeyer and Robert Joffrey be praised, after a fashion.

Every regional company that commands a tutu or two and can get its hands on a Christmas tree has a “Nutcracker,” of course. The adorable children, tippytoe dancers, ethereal sugarplums and sacrificial mice who do their sweet ritualistic things to glorious Tchaikovsky accompaniment have become a national cliche.

Willam Christensen staged the first major American “Nutcracker” in San Francisco 44 years ago, and a delightful, lavish revision of that version continues to spread yuletide cheer on the West Coast.

The perennial East Coast standard, since 1954, has been the monumentally pretty Balanchine production by the New York City Ballet. Mikhail Baryshnikov provided the alternative of a thinking-adult’s “Nutcracker”--with Freudian undertones--in 1976 for American Ballet Theatre.

Now, just when we thought it was safe to go back to the ballet, along comes the Joffrey’s mock-Victorian edition.

It was produced at a cost of $800,000 or $1.3 million or $1.5 million, depending on which report you happen to read. The cost, in any case, is being shared by the University of Iowa (where the production had its premiere on Dec. 10), New York (where it opened last week), and Los Angeles (where it will no doubt turn up in time for the next holiday blitz).

The credits are a bit confusing. Robert Joffrey, who happens to be a blissful fanatic in matters of Christmas nostalgia, “conceived and directed” the show and influenced most of the choreographic decisions, even though chronic asthma and related complications have confined him lately to a sickbed. Gerald Arpino devised the intricate, sexually integrated waltzes of the Snowflakes and Flowers. Scott Barnard served as enlightened traffic cop elsewhere, and, though unconfirmed, the formidable ghost of Balanchine haunted much of the proceedings.

Most crucially, perhaps, George Verdak oversaw the incorporation of elements from the miniature Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production of 1940. That production, we are reminded, was patterned by Alexandra Fedorova on the original Petipa/Ivanov “Nutcracker” at the Maryinsky Theater, anno 1892.

Under these complex creative circumstances, one has every right to fear a stylistic mishmash. Actually, the collaborative effort, though uneven, does enjoy a unifying aura of intimacy, exuberance and naivete.

The big production numbers stretch the modest Joffrey forces to the limit, however, and the dancers perform with far more urgency than suavity. The character solos and mime episodes still seem a bit tentative in execution, if not in design. The great climaxes tend to be predicated on scenic rather than choreographic impact.

The problems with this “Nutcracker” involve an odd fusion of banality, convention and, possibly least important, invention. The stage crawls and hops with children, but their function remains merely decorative. The endless character dances look cute, cute, cute, but the central balletic moments seem to intimidate the earnest young protagonists.

Oliver Smith’s outrageously kitschy sets and John David Ridge’s corresponding costumes set the action in a picture-post card America of cozy Currier and Ives prints and prim Victorian manners. Taste and restraint are of minimal impact here. Surprisingly, the flat-canvas Christmas tree expands to less than spectacular proportions, yet little Clara flies homeward at the end in a spiffy helium-balloon carriage.

For the cartoon characters, Joffrey enlisted the televisionary puppeteer Kermit Love. He gave Clara a heroic rocking horse, designed nifty Medieval mice, and, unfortunately, dehumanized old Mother Ginger by turning her/him into a 14-foot doll.

At the early Sunday matinee in the City Center, Mary Barton struck innocent poses as Clara. Tina LeBlanc reduced the Sugarplum ballerina to a promising soubrette. Tom Mossbrucker tried with variable success to be dashing as the Nutcracker Prince, while Carl Corry seconded him crisply as a disorienting Nutcracker-doll.

Portraying a pleasantly overworked Drosselmeyer, Alexander Grant--historic dynamo of the Royal Ballet--wore his eyepatch with elan and delivered a marvelously hammy impression of Robert Helpmann on one of his hocus-pocus expeditions.

The eager if somewhat scraggly performance on the stage was complemented by an eager if somewhat scraggly performance in the pit. John Miner tended carefully to the dancers’ and Tchaikovsky’s needs, in that order.

The audience, not incidentally, registered unmodified rapture at every turn and lift.

Later in the same afternoon, a few blocks away at Lincoln Center, the New York City Ballet proved that it need fear nothing from the upstart competition. Balanchine’s “Nutcracker” retains all its grandeur, all its wonder, all its impeccable musicality even after 34 years of strenuous, vicissitudinous repetition.

On this happy occasion, the children danced like charming, perfectly trained virtuosos. Heather Watts and Jock Soto danced on air as the exquisite Sugarplum and her noble cavalier. Melinda Roy sparkled neatly as the Dewdrop. Andre Kramarevsky offered a endearingly crusty old Drosselmeyer.

Damian Woetzel, a bright hope of the ill-fated Los Angeles Ballet, brought down the house in the hoop dance of the chief Candy Cane. William Otto reminded us how beguiling a live Mother Ginger can be, in hyper-skirted drag.

The scenic confections of Rouben Ter-Arutunian threatened the health of those who count calories. Still, one could take comfort in the famous Christmas tree, which grew and grew and grew in three glowing, magical dimensions.

Hugo Fiorato and a fine pit orchestra served Tchaikovsky with easy romantic pathos.

The performance was polished, poised, secure in matters of tone, stress and nuance. As such, it will more than satisfy all--repeat, all--the “Nutcracker” cravings of one grudging, over-indulged aficionado for a long time.

At least for a year. Maybe more.