A great deal has been said and written about "The Hard Nut," Mark Morris' production of "The Nutcracker," which will be performed through Thursday, Dec. 23, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
But no one has summed the piece up better than Mia Sanchez, a young dancegoer who is quoted on posters for "The Hard Nut." "It was weird," the 9-year-old critic wrote, "but I loved it."Morris' ballet is certainly a weird experience for those familiar with George Balanchine's standard-setting production of "The Nutcracker."
As if to thumb his nose at history and some of ballet's most cherished conventions, Morris has set his piece in a nightmarish American home in the 1960s and inserts a confusing subplot from the story by E.T.A. Hoffmann on which "The Nutcracker" was based.
And there is almost no bravura classical dancing.
What makes "The Hard Nut" so lovable, and indispensable, is a sweetness and spaciousness very like its traditional Tchaikovsky score. That mix is epitomized in Morris' characterization and Rob Besserer's portrayal of Drosselmeier, here a handsome, dapper man whose attempts to make everyone happy are reminiscent of some shy but boisterous young uncle forever at the edge of the family circle.
It is Drosselmeier's second-act duet with the Nutcracker, his nephew or perhaps his younger self, that establishes the ballet's theme.
Growing up is a frightening, lonely adventure whose promise is worth the journey. And that journey may find its reward in love, as expressed in a simple buoyant duet that follows for the Nutcracker and little Marie Stahlbaum, Morris' truehearted heroine, a dance filled with kisses deep enough to satisfy young fans of television's "90210" but not offend their parents.
Visually, too, those duets say it all. Adrianne Lobel's sets and Martin Pakledinaz's costumes, inspired by the drawings of the cartoonist Charles Burns, fill the eyes with stylized black-and-white decor and nightmarishly tacky red-and-green party clothes in the first act.
In the second act, huge, vaulting riblike circles outline but do not define the stage, which seems to open out into an infinite space for dancing.
Pakledinaz's palette has expanded lusciously by the second act, with flowers like waltzing Tiffany lamps and finale costumes like crumpled Christmas wrappings. The image of Drosselmeier and the Nutcracker, dressed in clear red and set loose, alone, in black, airy space, has a stunning purity that communicates innocence and hope.
Just as unusual, Morris uses images of a departing Marie and the Nutcracker on the screen of the Stahlbaums' television set at the ballet's end, to suggest that to grow up is to leave a lot behind.
There is a startling poignancy to this use of chill electronic technology and to the way it ends "The Hard Nut" with an allusion to the production's opening moments.
Some of the second-act choreography is on the thin side, though Morris is also his unassuming, inventive best in this act.
The cast is superb and movingly devoted, led by Clarice Marshall as Marie, William Wagner as the Nutcracker, Kraig Patterson as the maid and Peter Wing Healey as Mrs. Stahlbaum, with Marianne Moore as Marie's little brother, Tina Fehlandt as her older sister and Barry Alterman as Dr. Stahlbaum.
But in the end, what makes all this weirdness and lovableness important is that "The Hard Nut" - for all its pudgy unisex snowflakes in trotterlike toe-shoes, its timid mouse-battling G.I. Joe soldiers, its Jell-O colored party cocktails, and on and on - takes a serious new look at an old classic.