Whimsical ‘Tin Soldier’ From Ottawa Plays All the Angles

It’s not “The Nutcracker,” but it has toys that come to life, dancing soldiers and malevolent mice. It’s not “The Wizard of Oz,” but it has a nice-guy tin man on an adventure in the strangest places.

Based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, Ottawa Ballet’s “The Tin Soldier” plays all the angles, filling 48 minutes with everything from ragtime frogs to sewer rats who dance in a jazzy street-style that suggests a “West Side Story” rodent company.

This whimsical children’s ballet comes to the Disney Channel tonight in a 1992 adaptation of the original stage version that uses plenty of video technology (including computer animation) to make the fantasy come alive.

The tale has been balleticized more than once. In 1975, for instance, George Balanchine emphasized the hopeless yearning of the tin cavalier for a flighty paper ballerina in “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” (to Bizet). This time, Ottawa choreographer Timothy Spain makes the relationship anything but hopeless--though it is threatened periodically by an evil jack-in-the-box.

Veteran Canadian danseur noble Frank Augustyn (director of Ottawa Ballet) brings deadpan charm and solid technique to the title role. Dewy Stephanie Hutchinson looks comfortable with the classical platitudes of the ballerina. But Louis-Martin Charest steals every scene in which he appears as either the gleeful jumping-jack or the swaggering king gangsta rat. Bad toys have all the fun.

Spain’s dances are serviceable but undistinguished, leaving Mary Kerr’s witty costumes the main attraction here. Robert Swerdlow contributes a bright, hurdy-gurdy-ish (synthesizer?) score that generates a lot of energy but sounds graceless in lyric passages.

Writer-director David Langer deftly assembles the narrative, dance, and video elements in an engaging storybook, making special use of the tricks of scale that dramatize the difference between the so-called real world and the domain of toy soldiers and paper dolls.

Roy Kellar’s sets aren’t always as clever as the other production elements, but his smoky sewer is terrific: partly an urban playground, partly the perfect environment for a dollhouse “Les Miz.”

* Ottawa Ballet’s “The Tin Soldier” screens tonight at 7 on the Disney Channel.