An Inventive Nutcracker

For me, an undeniable highlight of Christmas 2024 was watching Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl with my family. The return of the beloved British stop-motion animated comedy—19 years after its last installment—saw the blundering Yorkshire-based inventor and his shrewd, trusty hound face off against an old foe, the dastardly penguin Feathers McGraw who hijacks Wallace’s latest AI robot invention to stage a jailbreak and a diamond heist.

Performance

Birmingham Royal Ballet’s “The Nutcracker”

Place

The Royal Albert Hall, London, UK, December 29, 2024

Words

Emily May

Birmingham Royal Ballet's “The Nutcracker” by David Bintley. Photograph by Annabel Moeller

As such aside from being the raucously wholesome family fun we’ve come to expect from Aardman Animations, Vengeance Most Fowl was a timely comment on modern technology. Despite the good intentions we have for creating it—in this case, Wallace developed his army of “Norbots” as home help companions, particularly to assist Gromit in tending his cherished garden—it can easily spiral out of control, rob us of daily tasks we enjoy, drive wedges between us and our loved ones, and be co-opted for nefarious purposes.

Unexpectedly, these technological questions ended up influencing my interpretation of another aspect of my festive viewing: Birmingham Royal Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” at the Royal Albert Hall. First staged at the London landmark in 2019 by David Bintley, this version of the ballet classic differs from Peter Wright’s original—his gift to the company upon their move from Sadler’s Wells to Birmingham in 1990—in more ways than just location. Notably, Bintley reimagines one of its central figures, the magician Drosselmeyer, as a doll maker and creator of automata. Just like Wallace, he is an inventor.

Instead of beginning in a ballroom as those familiar with BRB’s “The Nutcracker” may expect, Act One opens with the Dickensian-style frontage of Drosselmeyer’s workshop placed at the centre of the Royal Albert Hall’s horseshoe auditorium. Smoke billows out of the chimney and projections of silhouettes scurry about in the mullioned window, presumably crafting the toys intended as Christmas presents for Clara and her extended family. The crux of the plot, and Drosselmeyer’s unique profession, are described in a German-accented voiceover (read by actor Simon Callow) that reappears sporadically throughout the ballet. It’s a helpful yet subtle addition for audiences new to the narrative.

Suddenly, in an impressively slick scene change, the stage’s backdrop of metallic boards is flipped to create a series of French windows. A fireplace and sumptuously adorned Christmas tree also appear, transporting the action into a festive reception room. Relatives pile onto the stage in orderly lines, while battalions of sailor suit-wearing boys march dutifully behind their nannies. Later, they join young girls in skippy, folk-inspired duets, circling around each other and embodying different layered phrases in Tchaikovsky's jubilant score. Played by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia seated on a balcony above the stage, rather than hidden in an orchestra pit, it’s a rare treat to see, as well as hear, musicians showcasing their artistry.

Birmingham Royal Ballet's “The Nutcracker” by David Bintley. Photograph by Annabel Moeller

Yet it’s the appearance of Drosselmeyer and the unleashing of his inventions that really sets “The Nutcracker” into motion, and sparks my unlikely connection to Wallace and Gromit’s technological explorations. A mischievous jack in the box bursts out of his container, performing majestic split jumps and cartwheels, while a black and white harlequin jolts his limbs into right angles with clockwork precision. At this point, Drosselmeyer seems to be in complete control of his inventions, which return obediently to their boxes after their solos. The children they are gifts for run around with soldier and rat puppets—Clara with her Nutcracker—safe in the knowledge that the conflicts between the toys are merely figments of their imaginations.

That is until Clara falls asleep and the dolls take on a life of their own. As the clock strikes twelve, the Christmas tree grows into a gargantuan spruce—suggested here through projections of branches on several sides of the auditorium and the lowering of large baubles from above. It’s a clever idea, yet a slight disappointment for those who are used to seeing the tree literally, rather than abstractly, grow in Wright’s version. In one of the most exciting, vivid scenes of the ballet, a now sentient King Rat, accompanied by a band of rodents, bursts through the fire place in a cloud of smoke. Brandishing a sword and barrel rolling around the stage, he pursues Clara. Soon after, the Nutcracker and a regiment of redcoats come to her rescue, shooting rifles, rolling canons onto stage, marching and semaphoring their arms mechanically.

Just like Wallace with his good-turned-evil Norbots, surely Drosselmeyer didn’t intend for Clara to be pursued by a band of unruly rats when he first fashioned her Christmas present? Had he not considered the risks of creating such powerful inventions, or how to retain control over them? More worryingly, why does he transform the Nutcracker into a human as a reward for saving Clara? With technology on my mind, it feels like a chilling nod to the increasing humanity and emotional intelligence of machines and the conflicts it may cause in the future. Did Drosselmeyer never watch Channel 4’s sci fi series Humans? Maybe he wouldn’t have anthropomorphised Clara’s Nutcracker if he had.

Birmingham Royal Ballet’s “The Nutcracker.” Photograph by Bill Cooper

Of course, Act Two of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” doesn’t descend into conflict between humans and artificial intelligence. As per tradition, Clara rides on a goose to a magical land, shown again through projection rather than Clara actually flying across the stage on bird sculpture suspended from the ceiling. Here, she encounters flowers, fairies, and representations of traditional dances from all over the world. Corresponding watercolour drawings of Drosselmeyer’s inventions adorn stage-side screens, demonstrating that technological creations can be a thing of beauty, as well as danger.

Standout scenes from Clara’s travels include the trio of “Spanish” dancers with their staccato leg flicks and dramatic backbends, as well as white tutu-ed dancers embodying snowflakes, fluttering their fingers as if shaking ice from them. As they arrange themselves in concentric circles, their limbs overlap to create patterns as unique and complex as those of the frozen water they represent. As ever, the “Russian” dance is fast-paced and exciting, as the performers bowl onto stage with incomparable energy, clapping and cossack-kicking in perfect unison.

Yet it’s the slower paced “Arabian dance” that really catches my attention. In a series of gymnastic lifts, the lead female seamlessly wraps herself around her male partners’ bodies in slithery coils, the serpentine nature of her motions corresponding to snake-like rattles in the music. Towards the end of the scene, she runs to jump into her three castmates arms, but slips—perhaps on a rogue piece of snow that fell magically from above earlier in the ballet?—and never makes it up into her intended horizontal position. While inevitably disappointing for the dancers, the graceful recovery, determination to continue, and rapturous applause the group receive from the audience, reminds me of the beauty of ballet. Despite technological advancements, the simple pleasure of watching bodies in motion will never fade. A pre-programmed Norbot would probably not have made such a mistake, yet by removing risk from performance we also remove magic, awe, humanity, and heart. While it may have used high tech production elements to enhance them, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” had all of these things in abundance.

Emily May

Emily May is a British-born, Berlin-based arts writer and editor specializing in dance and performance. An alumna of Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance and a member of the Dance Section of the U.K. Critics' Circle, she regularly contributes to publications across Europe and America including Dance Magazine, Art Review, Frieze, The Stage, Flash Art, The Brooklyn Rail, and Springback Magazine. She is currently an editor at COLORSxSTUDIOS, where she launched and continues to manage a new editorial platform.

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