San Francisco Ballet - The Nutcracker

SFB's "Nutcracker;" Settling In

San Francisco Ballet
“Nutcracker”
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco, CA
Dec 14, 2006

by Ann Murphy
copyright 2006 by Ann Murphy

San Francisco Ballet’s “Nutcracker” still has a new car smell, and on Thursday, when the company launched the third season of its thoroughly retooled production, new car thrill filled the house.

At 7 pm, the lights came down and the first notes of Tchaikovsky’s swirling score spilled out of the pit. It was then that a delicious happiness—the kind that comes with being spirited away in a crisp, new machine—quickly spread through the aisles. The curtain rose and pictures of early 20th century San Francisco paraded before us. When the stage filled with handsome Edwardian types, including the toymaker Drosselmeyer, excited preschoolers began their loud narratives of the action. Grownups in the audience, meanwhile, joined in in their own way, gasping and clapping at the bold elegance of Michael Yeargan’s set designs, or at the precocious cuteness of the kids on stage. So began a swift ride in a fast machine.

Like the Toyota Scion or the Prius, this compact, intelligent “Nutcracker” is clearly a hit. But like some of the new fuel-efficient cars, there have been serious trade-offs in building a tighter and leaner vehicle. “Nutcrackers” historically groan under the weight of sluggish pacing, muddled narrative and dull scenery. SFB’s “Nutcracker”, set in 1915, has none of those drawbacks. It is iridescent, elegant and full of openness, despite a world war waging in Europe deemed “the war to end all wars”. All the same, Thursday’s production seemed at the mercy of stopwatch precision as though designed to meet a minimalist’s obsessions or even a Swiss train schedule. Brain, not heart, efficiency, as opposed to dance’s sensual economies, ruled the pacing and revealed the flaws in Tomasson’s choreography with unprecedented clarity.

In most “Nutcrackers”, the opening mise-en-scene is a play of small events that take us from Drosselmeyer’s toyshop to the Stahlbaum house, where a Christmas eve party is underway. SFB’s Act I is clearly drawn. There is fog, not snow, this being San Francisco, and Drosselmeyer’s mesmerist’s coat signals that he’s more than a mere toymaker. Along his route, he meets the usual supernumeraries, although each seems a vague representation of a type, rather than the type itself, and the cumulative effect begins to inject a sense of the perfunctory rather than the magical, the shallow as opposed to the mysterious. Perhaps with better stage direction that could be righted.

But other problems in Act I seemed systemic. Set in a broad room with beautifully dressed denizens, the party is aptly braided with action. The centerpiece, as usual, is Drosselmeyer (Ashley Wheater), now revealed as a magician who can command the crowd with a life-sized mechanical doll and a jack in the box. And it is, in general, a successful episode. But Drosselmeyer seizes the stage both unmusically and halfheartedly, slipping in for his wizardry through upstage right and beginning in the middle of a phrase. It’s as though Tomasson can’t commit to the classical dictates of dramatic narrative, and it is an ambivalence that crops up throughout Act I’s dancing. Patterns that seem to just be getting underway suddenly unwind. Clara (the lithe and capable Hannah Foster) launches into balances with her new Nutcracker—the original Ugly Doll—when, the dutiful duet dies. Only Diego Hyndman as Fritz hilariously tears up the stage as bad boy without a care for the fact that his own scenes also lurch to a close. When, near midnight, Clara rushes downstairs, pops a brief look at the tree, scoops up the Nutcracker, and, in a flash is asleep on the divan, one begins to wonder who, exactly, is driving this machine—Tchaikovsky? Conductor Martin West? The stagehands’ unions?

If this malaise only beset Act I, one could pass it off as just another weakness of a venerable holiday confection that is traditionally too long and unwieldy. But Act II has similar problems, from anemic choreography for Sugar Plum, danced at once regally and awkwardly by Vanessa Zahorian, to undramatic action in the Grand Pas de Deux (Yuan Yuan Tan and Tilt Helimets). When the music soared, this majestic couple, adult personifications of Clara and Nutcracker, were stranded on opposite sides of the stage. And as the score reached a crescendo, the dancers were mid-sentence. Despite exquisite adagio work by Tan who floated into every demi-plié and dangled magically in each passé, the couple seemed to have as much to do with love as mismatched dancers on “So You Think You Can Dance.” For one thing, Helimets seemed too much a good boy in search of audience favor, even correcting his fifth position landings. Tan worked hard to demonstrate her growing musicality, which has acquired beautiful new shading in adagio, where she draws notes out with dreamy musing. But she’s still brittle whenever she has to whip speed into her footwork. And while one could argue that timing is critical in love, love is about relationship and not personal glory. It was no help to anyone that the wind section seemed to rush on alone all night long, the strings in hot pursuit.

Where Tomasson’s dance making superceded the old SFB “Nutcracker” in spades was in the Waltz of the Flowers. Here, as a fine geometrist with no story to tell, he made use of Petipa-style flow and pattern with an ease, delicacy and musical aptness built into the patterns themselves. His dance for King and Queen of the Snow (Kristin Long and Joan Boada) glistened with bravura exclamations and was carried off adeptly by the glinting pair. But Tomasson’s less than lyrical movement for the Sugar Plum Fairy fared less well. Zahorian hasn’t enough mastery of her own timing yet to invest the role with the phrasing it needs, and Thursday she seemed almost to lose herself to nerves. But the real issue is that, at its core, the composition lacks lyrical drive and the kind of shape that etches itself on the eye.

And yet, when all is said and done, the structure and design of this “Nutcracker” has an aura of genius. It is modern in most of the right ways, and transforms a treacly tradition into a deeply satisfying tale of a girl’s coming of age. Strong casting hides its compositional weaknesses. And when the casting is spotty, as it was Thursday, you can still sit back and enjoy the marvelously well-tooled ride with its spectacular scenery for what it is.

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SFB's "Nutcracker;" Settling In