Royal Ballet ‘Nutcracker’ Oversteps Itself

An attempt to cram more dancing into a traditional “Nutcracker” reaches a dead end tonight in the lavish Royal Ballet version on PBS.

Over the last 16 years, Peter Wright’s staging and Julia Trevelyan Oman’s designs have grown familiar to Americans through telecasts on cable and a home video edition. In this revision (videotaped in 2000), the standard Clara story is again supplemented by a prologue and epilogue depicting Drosselmeyer’s efforts to rescue his young nephew from a curse. But the components don’t fit: Drosselmeyer is desperately concerned with the boy in two short scenes yet doesn’t seem to recognize him throughout Act 2.

Worse, the Christmas spirit now nearly vanishes as Clara remains too occupied with showing off fancy classical steps to notice much else. Not only does she get a boyfriend to dance with in Act 1, she invades nearly all the Act 2 divertissements too. Alina Cojocaru reveals refinement and versatility in the role, but she doesn’t belong with the real children on view and her new choreography soon seems a pointless imposition.

In the 1985 Royal/Wright TV “Nutcracker,” Anthony Dowell danced the grand pas de deux; here he’s a deft, elegant Drosselmeyer. His former role falls to Jonathan Cope, prone to placement problems, but a reliable partner for the fleet Miyako Yoshida as the Sugar Plum Fairy. Her sparkling pointe work proves the highlight of the performance.

Ivan Putrov dances skillfully, but his expanded duties as the Nutcracker/Nephew leave him no time to form an emotional bond with Clara, who, in any case, has Giacomo Ciriaci ready to partner her in the party scenes. Zenaida Yanowsky leads the “Waltz of the Flowers,” and Nicola Tranah turns up in two specialty dances.

Conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov opts for an unusually stately pace, bringing out unfamiliar details of an over-familiar Tchaikovsky score (heard complete except for “Mother Ginger”). Ross MacGibbon’s TV direction and Andrew Frampton’s editing, however, often seem arbitrary or aimless.

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The Royal Ballet “Nutcracker” airs at 9 tonight on KCET-TV.