Sarah Lamb as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. Photo ROH, Johan Persson
This Christmas Sir Peter Wright will be the producer and choreographer of not one but two versions of The Nutcracker in London. Curious to find out more OffScreen went in search of Sir Peter. Words by Lynda Beckett
We arranged to meet Sir Peter at the Royal Opera House to find out more about the two productions. One will be a traditional performance at The Royal Opera House, the other will be a more dramatic version in the less familiar setting of the O2 Centre, in Greenwich, London.
The Nutcracker premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg on 16th December, 1892. The Imperial Ballet performed a lavish two-act ballet, choreographed by Lev Ivanov and Marius Petipa, for the pleasure of the Tsar and court. Tchaikovsky composed the score during the Romantic era, late in his life. The storyline for the ballet was adapted from Hoffmann’s, ‘The Nutcracker and the Mouse King’. Hoffmann was a German fantasy and horror author and his story was a dark and sinister tale. Tchaikovsky’s ballet removes much of the darkness.
Getting The Nutcracker ballet into Europe wasn’t an easy task. Russian emigrees initially brought it to the West in small pieces tucked in ballets, such as Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. However by the mid 20th century the full-length version of the ballet had become a staple for ballet companies in the West and especially in those countries that celebrate Christmas. In 1934 the Vic-Wells Ballet staged the first complete performance of The Nutcracker in London. It was based on choreographic notations that had been smuggled out of Russia.
Sir Peter’s first production of The Nutcracker was 27 years ago for the Royal Ballet, and was performed at the Royal Opera House. This production was a traditional interpretation and it is still being performed, albeit with many changes. It is this interpretation that you will see at the Royal Opera House this Christmas. He created a second production, a dramatic interpretation for the Birmingham Royal Ballet, 21 years ago. This interpretation will be performed at the O2, in London.
Everyone loves going to the ballet at Christmas. It has a ‘feel good factor’ and The Nutcracker is the perfect ballet to enchant the whole family. As Sir Peter explains ‘Hoffmann’s story is a complicated and difficult one, however it is very inspirational and sparks off wonderful ideas.’ The general format of the story remains the same with every production, however the Birmingham Royal Ballet focuses much more on Clara’s dream/nightmare, whereas at the Royal Opera House Drosselmeyer and his nephew lead the production.
The storyline used at the Royal Opera House goes something like this. Drosselmeyer, a maker of mechanical dolls and a magician, is in his workshop making a Christmas Angel for the Stahlbaum family Christmas tree. On the wall is a picture of Drosselmeyer’s nephew, Hans-Peter, who has been transformed into a nutcracker soldier doll by the evil Mouse King.
Drosselmeyer goes to the Stahlbaums’ Christmas Eve party where the family are celebrating with friends. He performs magic tricks to entertain everyone and eventually gives Clara the nutcracker. She immediately falls in love with it.
Ludovic Ondiviela and Elizabeth Harrod in The Nutcracker. Photo ROH, Johan Persson
After the party Clara awakes and creeps downstairs in search of the nutcracker. Drosselmeyer appears and makes the Christmas tree, toy fort and doll’s house grow to massive proportions, before the room transforms into a battleground for mice and toy soldiers. The Mouse King appears and attacks the nutcracker doll. Clara kills the Mouse King with her shoe and the nutcracker turns back into Hans-Peter.
To celebrate Clara’s bravery, Drosselmeyer sends her and Hans-Peter on a journey through the Land of Snow to the glittering Sugar Garden of the Kingdom of Sweets where they are met by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince. Hans-Peter tells the Sugar Plum Fairy of their adventures, before they join in the wonderful entertainment organised by Drosselmeyer. The festivities come to a close and Clara finds herself on the snowy street outside her home, where she meets a handsome young man. It is Hans-Peter who then enters Drosselmeyer’s workshop, the spell having been broken.
As you can imagine, producing a well-known ballet has its own challenges, if you want to produce something close to the original storyline. ‘When you produce a ballet like Nutcracker which already exists, you first decide what of the original choreography you will use. In The Nutcracker there is very little that still exists. Then you make your plan, you have to make a choreographic pattern. You need first and foremost to make a structure. The music sets the whole thing. The Tchaikovsky score is absolutely magnificent.’
What does exist from the original is the grand pas de deux, between the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Prince, in the last act. ‘Other pieces that still exist, which I use, are the Chinese Dance and The Dance of the Mirlitons. When I first did Nutcracker, Professor Roland John Wiley went to Russia and found the notations of The Dance of the Snowflakes. The piece was for 61 girls. The notations were all floor patterns with one basic step, waltzing, waltzing, waltzing, in and out. I used that as a basis and then I re-choreographed it. In all of the productions I have done, I always try to be true to the originators, to honour the creators and be true to them. But one has to also think as time changes, audiences change, the way that things are done changes and dancer’s techniques change. All are very different to the setting of the original work. You have to move with the times.’
Sir Peter loves theatre and thinks the most important thing that the audience is able to relate to is what is happening on stage. Will what he is producing keep them absolutely fascinated?
‘Before I can go any further, getting the design right is important. Actually that to me is the most important of all, apart from the music. The music is number one, two I would say is the design.’ He works very closely with the designer. ‘That takes quite a long time.’
Sir Peter’s original production at Covent Garden was designed by Julia Trevelyan Oman, who at that time was mainly a television designer. Her design went very much with the traditional German, Edwardian-style decoration – the picture postcard – what everybody imagines as a traditional German household’s Christmas.
‘There aren’t rules about how you come together with your ideas, the important thing is that it has to make the choreography work for the dancers. It is no good having a very interesting stage, on different levels, expecting the dancers to dance on them. That is the hardest thing for the designer. Usually you have got to leave a 40ft square for the dance and then make it interesting around the edges, which is hard, very hard. But of course in certain scenes it doesn’t have to be like that.
The Nutcracker. Photo ROH, Johan Persson
‘The audience comes to the ballet primarily to see the dancing. The production has to enhance that, so you have to get the set right for the dancers whatever else is happening. But experienced designers understand that you have to have a circle or a square with a diagonal to achieve your basic patterns.’
Great examples of theatre in both of the productions are the transformation scene, particularly when the Christmas tree grows and the living room changes scale. ‘Here at the Royal Opera House the big transformation scene is absolutely remarkable, because the Christmas tree that is quite small at the back of the stage, grows and grows out of the floor to the height of 40ft.’ The aim of the production was to use the stage and its versatility in full, and to play with the size of the stage and use the mechanics within to full effect. The tree grows to spectacular proportions. It starts off actually three levels down, so that you just see the tip of it. And then when the lift at the back of the stage brings the tree up, it takes over the entire stage. At the same time the walls also change and the toy fort and dolls house become big enough for life-size dancers. Sir Peter remarks, ‘It can only be done at the Royal Opera House; it could never be done at the O2 Centre because they haven’t got the depth beneath the stage.’
At the O2 Centre, the audience will see the production that John Macfarlane designed for the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Sir Peter loves his work. ‘John is totally involved in the story which is spectacular and magical. He has a wonderful sense of theatre’. His designs are painterly and abstract. In this production John had to be very inventive about how he did the transformation scene because he didn’t have the mechanisms, traps and space of the Royal Opera House. In the Birmingham Royal Ballet production whole walls turn as Clara stands in the middle of the stage. The Christmas tree starts to grow on one side of the stage. At the same time huge branches come in from the side and from above. The fireplace becomes massive. King Mouse (a rat in this production) appears out of it, followed by a hoard of rats ready to fight in what is now a battlefield. The combination of all this happening at once is magical.
Sir Peter hopes that huge audiences will attend the six performance run at the O2 Centre. The O2 Centre is a vast empty space, so the production team has to build a complete proscenium arch with all the lighting bars and the grids to fly scenery up and down. Building a proscenium arch creates a problem with sight lines. With this in mind a couple of things have been planned. ‘There will be a thrust stage in front, so that everything can be brought out beyond the proscenium arch and eighty strong orchestra. This will give more people the ability to see everything. That means that most of the choreography will have to be adapted to bring it further forward, especially the big scenes involving the corps de ballet’.
Four cameras will film the complete production. The footage will be cut live and transmitted onto a huge screen above the stage. So, way back in the rafters, the audience will be able to see in detail the faces and footwork of the dancers and then can look back at the stage to see the whole ballet.
With a lot of careful planning, Peter thinks the filming of the ballet can be turned to the production’s advantage. ‘I think that this is going to be very special because there is so much happening in Nutcracker; the magician does amazing tricks and there are remote control rats running all over the floor. But the cameras can’t get too close or they will give away the tricks with all the little wires. This is all under the supervision of Ross MacGibbon, the famous television dance director’.
Because of the time needed for the build and the O2 Centre being used for other things, by the time the company goes to the O2 Centre they won’t get a week’s rehearsal there. As far as the dancers and the orchestra are concerned, they have two days to get it all done. ‘We are going to rehearse in Birmingham in a large space with a mock-up of how it will be at the O2’. The company will have a week in Birmingham to prepare. They will travel down to London and have a full rehearsal in the afternoon and another rehearsal in the evening. The next day will be the opening night following a full dress rehearsal with the orchestra. Turnabout for both productions is fast. At the Royal Opera House they get slightly more rehearsal time, but there are ten different casts for the principals, they need every moment available.
Because it is a Christmas ballet, The Nutcracker draws a young family audience. Sir Peter hopes that the production at the O2 Centre will inspire a lot of new people to go to the ballet at Covent Garden, Sadler’s Wells and the Coliseum. His aim is to make sure that the quality of both productions is the best that can possibly be achieved.
The Nutcracker, Andrea Tredinnick, Tyrone Singleton and Artists of Birmingham Royal Ballet in the 'Arabian Dance'. Photo courtesy of Roy Smiljanic
The Nutcracker will be performed at the Royal Opera House on:
3, 23, 28 December, 3, 14 January at 7pm
5, 7, 13, 29, 30 December, 7, 11, 18 January at 7.30pm
20, 31 December at 12.30pm
24 December, 2 January at 12 noon
11, 18, 23, 28 December, 3, 14 January at 2pm
7 January at 2.30pm
31 December at 5.30pm
And at The 02 Centre on:
27, 28, 30 December at 7.30pm
28, 29, 30 December at 2.00pm
