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“The Nutcracker”
The Australian Ballet
Sydney Opera House/Joan Sutherland Theatre
Sydney, Australia
December 12, 2024 (live stream)

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2024 by Ilona Landgraf

This year, getting in a happy Christmas mood isn’t easy in my home country, Germany. We’re in troubled waters, and prospects for the new year are dismal. Even our major ballet stages abandoned a festive program. The State Ballet Berlin scheduled Christian Spuck’s Bovary and Swan Lake for the holiday season; the Bavarian State Ballet is presenting a mixed bill (Duato/Skeels/Eyal) and Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet. At least audiences in Stuttgart, Hamburg, and Dresden can attend performances of The Nutcracker, but Stuttgart’s rendering is screwed up, and Dresden’s is saccharine. The bright spot is Hamburg Ballet, which kept Neumeier’s much-lauded version in its repertory.

The Australian Ballet’s live stream of The Nutcracker was therefore a welcome addition, especially as the company presented Peter Wright’s traditional version, which was staged for the Royal Ballet in 1984 and later adapted for Birmingham Royal Ballet.
It is based on Marius Petipa’s and Lev Ivanov’s 1892 original for the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, and is imbued with all the vibes and virtues traditionally cherished at Christmas: Love, harmony, peace, and a happy family life. Young Clara, the Nutcracker’s protagonist, is a protected child dreaming of a bright future. While her dream will certainly come true, no such bright future is even imaginable in the current Western world. Even worse, we can forget about love, harmony, and peace; we’re in a recession and lectured about armament. Perhaps that’s why The Nutcracker continues to be a crowd-pleaser. Audiences intuitively know what they need—and what Wright’s Nutcracker abundantly offers.

Who doesn’t want to be invited to the Stahlbaums’ cozy home (designed by John Macfarlane) where assiduous attendants (Isabella Smith and Yaru Xu) scurry through the festively decorated hall balancing tablets laden with champagne glasses next to a respectable Christmas tree that—once lit—radiates awe-inspiring magic? It’s easy to feel welcome in a household as warm and generous as Lady Stahlbaum’s (Serena Graham). Her daughter, Clara (Grace Carroll, who gave her role debut), who’s at the brink of adolescence, undoubtedly takes after her, whereas little Fritz (Matthew Mortimer) is a rascal in need of his father’s (i.e., Jarryd Madden’s) firm hand. A textbook example of cordiality, the Stahlbaums represent a family life that many yearn for. It is heartwarming to see the love that still sizzles between granny (Gillian Revy)—who donned her best white bonnet and a très chic cape—and grandpa (Patrick Harding-Irmer).

Excitement grew the moment the eccentric Drosselmeyer (Callum Linnane) and his assistant (Drew Hedditch) joined the party. Like an effusive jester, Hedditch bounced about and directed everyone’s attention toward his master and his magic tricks (I especially liked the hovering Christmas tree ball). The dancing puppets that Drosselmeyer conjured out of mysterious cases included a melancholic Harlequin (Luke Marchant)—who wooed the self-assured, stiff-limbed Columbine (Yuumi Yamada)—and Jack-in-the-Box (Lucien Xu) who jumped incessantly as if attached to invisible springs (his chubby legs seemed to defy gravity).
No one was truly scared of Drosselmeyer’s remote-controlled toy rat, which heralded the artillery battery of the rats (led by Timothy Coleman’s King Rat) that later attacked Clara in her dream. Thanks to the cute faces Macfarlane created for them, the rodents didn’t look malicious. But be careful! Their surprise assault from behind the fireplace blindsided Clara. Although the former toy soldiers and the Nutcracker doll (Cameron Holmes) heroically defended her, it was due only to Clara’s courageous intervention that the Nutcracker doll was spared from the Rat King’s devastating sword thrust.
This feat miraculously transformed the Nutcracker into a trim Prince (Joseph Caley) whose devotion nurtured the romantic feelings that had already sprouted in Clara at the Christmas party. (Her nightie was so sumptuous that it could have passed as a wedding dress.) As she was carried by Tchaikovsky’s high-flying tunes and the strong arms of the Prince, Clara swiftly matured into a young woman. She was off to a fabulous future and eager to embrace it.
A strong goose flew Clara from her first stopover—the stormy realm of the snowflakes (reigned by Rina Nemoto’s Snow Fairy)—to a columned, marble hall in the clouds.
Drosselmeyer’s magic quickly transformed its Rorschach test-like backdrop into a flowery wonderland. The rats and soldiers burst into the aerial heights, but this time, the Rat King proved to be second best and was put behind bars. Remarkably, once the danger passed, young Clara didn’t dream merely of an entertaining spectacle but of getting acquainted with foreign cultures. Regardless of who performed for her, the Spaniards, Chinese, Arabians, Russians, or—representing French baking art—the Mirlitons, she marveled at all of them and participated in their dances again and again.
The quicksilver Rose Fairy (Ako Kondo) coached her to be creamy or crisp, whereas the Sugar Plum Fairy (Sharni Spencer) embodied everything that Clara strove for. I couldn’t help but compare the Fairy’s refined pas de deux with the Prince to a marzipan couple on top of a wedding cake—so beautiful and perfect that everyone admires it and no one dares take a bite.
Once awake, Clara hugged her wooden Nutcracker toy. For she was again a young girl, but there was no doubt what kind of woman she would burgeon into.

If one has to play Tchaikovsky’s score almost every night for an entire run of twenty-one performances, weariness might sneak in. Yet the Opera Australia Orchestra, playing under the baton of ABT’s and Pittsburg Ballet’s principal conductor, Charles Barker, made it sparkle as if accompanying a premiere.