BALLET REVIEW : A Vapid ‘Nutcracker’ : American Ballet Theatre’s Version Is Not Easy to Love

We’ve endured a lot of “Nutcrackers” lately. Take your pick--nicely neo-classic, roaringly romantic, kitschy cutesy, kiddie-show sweetsy, adult-serious, oh-so-mysterious, psychobabbly deep, trendy-irreverent, old-fashioned European, quaintly American, even home-alone glamorous.

Brace yourself. For richer or poorer, for better or worse, ‘tis the season. . . .

Humbug.

“The Nutcracker,” with its twinkle-toe toys and parlor trees expanding before our wondering eyes and dauntless visions of saccharine fairies, just can’t fail. Or can it?

At least one major entry in the local sweepstakes, an ambitious import from what used to be the Soviet Union, had to be canceled because hardly anyone wanted to buy tickets. And now, from the valiant folks who are slaving to keep American Ballet Theatre off the endangered-species list, comes a big, brand-new fantasy-glitz production prettily staged by Kevin McKenzie, the danseur turned impresario, and gently outfitted with a quasi-revisionist libretto by Wendy Wasserstein, the prize-winning playwright from Broadway.

The so-called world-premiere engagement opened Friday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. The same production moves northward to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for 10 days beginning Dec. 21. New York won’t meet the terpsichorean rats and sugarplums in question until spring, but the off-seasonal suspense in Fun City should be bearable.

One wants to love this “Nutcracker.” Ballet Theatre isn’t exactly in the best of fiscal health. We live in harsh times, and good guys are rallying to the aid of a noble company in undeserved distress. For anyone who cares about such mundane matters as style, musical logic and choreographic invention, however, this isn’t an easy “Nutcracker” to love.

McKenzie, whose credentials as a choreographer aren’t exactly staggering, has cranked out a series of clotted storybook cliches in defense of an innocent tradition. He makes everything look quaint. He keeps the action, if it can be called that, moving. He unravels the plot without recourse to stilted mime ritual. Unfortunately, he doesn’t always seem to trust Tchaikovsky, and he doesn’t always seem to know what to do with his young and eager dancers.

They spend a lot of time standing around smiling. Ensemble maneuvers vacillate between the muddled and the disoriented.

Ivanov and Sergeyev, ghosts of Christmases past, do haunt the proceedings, without credit, from time to time. Yes, Clara, there are fishdives in the ultimate pas de deux. Often, however, Mackenzie turns his back on the past and, in the process, confuses clutter with grandeur, repetition with development.

Even more disturbing, he seems less than sensitive to the basic impulses, both narrative and figurative, of the superb score. He cuts this, moves that, interpolates a little something here, pastes a little nothing there.

On occasion, he uses comic music for solemn ceremonies. He leaves the first half of the ballet virtually bereft of ballet. In the second act, he actually turns the ethereal waltz of the flowers into a ballroom exercise for a corps of let’s-pretend flora partnered by strange gents who model suits suitable for the senior prom. So much for poetry.

As the finale beckons, the confused viewer confronts four ballerinas competing for the center-stage spotlight. Little Clara is literally maturing by leaps and bounds. But she is flanked by the beaming Sugarplum Fairy, the smirking Dew Drop Fairy and the would-be imperious if underemployed Snow Queen. This, my dears, is tutu much, even for Candyland.

Wasserstein has written a charming libretto. You can read it in the program. Little of it is illuminating, however, and much of it gets lost in translation to the stage.

The most notable innovations involve restoration of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Hard Nut” parable (Mark Morris did it better) and a fatuous subplot that equips Drosselmeyer with a motive for all his hokey hocus-pocus meddling. The good doctor, we discover, has a handsome son. Pop wants to fix up the kid with little Clara. Matchmaker, matchmaker. . . .

Paul Kelly has framed the proceedings in a carnival proscenium complete with adorable moving props. He has designed sets, moreover, that might make Mr. and Mrs. Hallmark blush. The great Christmas tree grows a bit anticlimactically, but the garish flowers of Fantasyville open their blossoms on cue with exquisite precision. Theoni V. Aldredge’s costumes seem a bit confused regarding details of historical period, but they never desert the cause of prettiness.

And the performance? It was never less than competent on Friday. Well, hardly ever.

With Amanda McKerrow on the injured list, Yan Chen--an alumnus of the Washington Ballet still listed as a member of the ABT corps--made her debut as Clara. Trained in Shanghai, she is dainty, neat and fleet, uncloyingly winsome, and an actress of engaging simplicity. Remember the name.

Robert Wallace served diligently as her flamboyantly muscular mini-cavalier, a.k.a. Nutcracker-Prince a.k.a. Drosselmeyer Jr.

Victor Barbee was conviviality personified as Drosselmeyer Sr. Too bad McKenzie and Wasserstein wouldn’t let him be macabre or witty or scary or, at the very least, enigmatic.

Julie Kent, long-limbed and patrician, exuded muted grandeur in the all-purpose duties of the Sugarplum Fairy, seconded with reasonable degrees of virile panache by Robert Hill. Christina Fagundes flitted nimbly through the modest duties of the Snow Queen. Kathleen Moore--a modernist not exactly typecast as the intrusive, ever-coy Dew Drop--preened and quivered without obvious embarrassment.

The assorted divertissement specialists ignited their flames via automatic pilot. The corps de ballet looked a bit sloppy, but the dancing rodents were pleasant.

In the pit, a reasonable facsimile of the Pacific Symphony played a bit scrappily for the rather placid Jack Everly. When tempos digressed from the norm, they erred on the side of haste. Under the circumstances, one could be grateful.

During the opening-night curtain calls, the sophisticates out front cheered McKenzie but booed the Rat King. Something seemed off kilter here.