You may have seen the “Nutcracker” countless times. It might be a holiday tradition to see it every year. But have you ever been inside
This weekend, I was standing in front of a house I had never been to before, but familiar music made it seem like a place I’d known for a long time. Then the door opened and I went straight to the ballet.
This dreamy experience – and how it’s sustained – is the great performance of The Nutcracker at Wethersfield, which BalletCollective is running through December 23rd at the Wethersfield Estate in Amenia, NY. (The production is also streamed for free on his website December 23-26.)
Wethersfield is a find. A red brick Georgian house with antique drawing rooms surrounded by formal gardens and complemented with a big top. It’s a near-perfect “nutcracker” set. Or more than a set: the place you always imagined, a fantasy that you can enter.
This particular achievement is linked to a more fundamental one. Most, if not all, of the living “Nutcrackers” in the area have been canceled, including the one most important to the cast of this production. Its artistic director and choreographer Troy Schumacher and almost all of his 23 dancers are members of the New York City Ballet, whose benchmark Balanchine production they will not perform this year. (A 2019 recording will be broadcast on Marquee TV through January 3rd.)
However, during the pandemic, a haunted “nutcracker” is possible on a remote property. During this carefully designed operation, masked guests group themselves in seven to eight socially distant pods, self-selected groups of two to six people. I say “guests” because you can’t exactly buy tickets. Pandemic restrictions don’t allow that. Instead, underwriters who contribute at least $ 5,000 are invited to bring a group. Forty percent of the slots are offered for free to local nonprofits and key workers – and some critics like me, so we can tell the story.
A more intimate “nutcracker,” this is a pared-down one in some ways. For the opening party scene, it’s just the core family – mom and dad, Fritz and Marie (played by adults) – plus an avuncular Drosselmeyer with a gift for magic and three pods from audience members huddling in the corners. However, it is remarkable how much is preserved: the cozy atmosphere, two dance toys, four giant mice.
The Tchaikovsky music is played, but some guests experience an interlude in an ornate room in which violinist Lauren Cauley plays a piece by the composer “Sleeping Beauty” (in a new electroacoustic arrangement by Darian Donovan Thomas). It’s a nice addition to the party and also part of the not-entirely-flawless pace and spacing – it occupies the first few guests while later arrivals see a repeat of the opening section. In places where the process comes to a standstill, you can observe and admire the still impressive mechanism.
If you peer through the windows from the outside, you will witness bedtime and the arrival of the mice. Each target group sees a different point of view. In my case, all of the actors – Drosselmeyer, the father, a mouse – couldn’t resist playing around with a chess board as if they had all seen “The Queen’s Gambit”.
Most of the fresh specialties are like this: small, sweet. The human-sized nutcracker crosses swords with the mouse king in a courtyard and scares him instead of killing him and without the help of Marie. But then we follow the nutcracker in amazement.
At the edge of an oval pool, in the distance we watch a wonderfully framed “waltz of snowflakes”, whose dancers give their best on a grassy slope. We follow topiary paths strewn with fairy lights into the tent, where a table is set for each capsule, on which are fake and untouchable delicacies.
In the middle there is a stage, which means that you can dance properly. most of the usual diversions from Act II – minus “coffee” and “tea” and their ethnically stereotypical pitfalls. Mr. Schumacher’s choreography is appropriate and skilfully meets the challenge of an in-the-round staging with occasional bliss, but without any real magic.
The dancing was good too, up to the standards of the city ballet but not the heights of the city ballet. As can happen in the Balanchine production, the Sugarplum Fairy (Ashley Laracey, who takes turns with Sara Mearns) was outshone by Dewa, Mira Nadon, who shone with amplitude and ballerina authority amid eight waltz flowers.
But while part of the goal of this production is to get members of a great company dancing again, it’s not really about great choreography or great dancing. It’s also not really about the whole Nutcracker story, some of which is left behind in favor of the trip. After we leave the house, we never see Marie and her family again. It’s like we’ve become them.
This transformation is the real magic of this solution to a pandemic problem. What I found most moving was the pantomime with which the dancers and some ushers led us through the ballet. This was danced with kind permission, a warm welcome and, like the setting, it took me right into the heart of a ballet that luckily I hadn’t missed.
The Nutcracker in Wethersfield
Until December 23 at Wethersfield Estate, Amenia, NY; and streaming 23.-26. December, nutcrackeratwethersfield.com.
