Updated Nutcracker still magical

Adriana Harper's Clara dreams the second Nutcracker act from her hospital bed. Picture / Maarten Holl

Forget the traditional Victorian-style Christmas ballet, with tutus and spangles and a towering, decorated tree.

Forget Uncle Drosselmeyer, forget the Sugar Plum Fairy too.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet's new production of The Nutcracker has sashayed into the future, with scarcely a glance over its shoulder.

Think, instead, the 1930s era of Hollywood big bands, a cosy family parlour complete with RCA "talking machine". Think Fair Isle cardigans for fat little boys, and flapper frocks for small girls. Think Betty Boop and early Disney cartoons. Think high excitement, sugar overload, a thoroughly "modern" Christmas.

Then stand by for a big dose of romance and magic and fun.

Gary Harris, artistic director at the RNZB, scheduled The Nutcracker into the company's programme two or three years ago, and has been filling little notebooks with drawings and ideas for its brand new incarnation since then. He saw "all sorts of things" in shows or at random.

"I have had all these ideas for special effects - the story, the steps, the music, catapulting around my head like five superballs ...

"The big question for a long time was: a traditional version or a really mad version?"

The really mad version won out. Surprise, surprise. "That's me," Harris agrees.

But it is not so mad that it does not make more sense of what is a lack of plot in the original, when Clara falls into an unexplained and completely narrative-free reverie beneath the aforementioned Christmas tree.

The lack of substance in the whole of Nutcracker's second act has always "really bugged" Harris, and he speaks from experience. He danced in the English National Ballet's annual performances of the work for six or seven years, restaged it for the Hong Kong Ballet and worked on Royal Ballet productions twice. He has "seen loads of other versions". His favourite was the Mark Morris contemporary The Hard Nut.

"The original story is all over in the first act," he says. "The rest is just fluff."

The idea for his new scenario broke through after a dinner party with friends who questioned him on The Nutcracker story, and how confusing it was. One of the guests suggested the idea of setting the second act in a children's hospital.

And Harris had his new plot. The ideas began to flow. Just as in the original story, Clara receives a nutcracker doll for Christmas. Unlike in the original, brother Fritz is a larger-than-life character, and in a fit of sibling rivalry cracks the doll over Clara's head, knocking her unconscious. Clara is carried off to hospital, dosed up on medicine for suspected concussion, and the second act unfolds beautifully, the result of her swooning head and Matron's administrations.

"It's a scenario," says Harris, "that gives the story legs."

It is a scenario that also gave Harris, assistant choreographer Adrian Burnett, and designer, the late Kristian Fredrikson, a whole new playing field on which to display their talents.

Fredrikson, esteemed Kiwi creator of sets and costumes for innumerable theatrical, operatic and dance productions around the world, succumbed to a long-standing illness just days after his latest Nutcracker opened in Wellington.

"I am aiming for the trifecta this year," he said, in his last interview - "2005 will be the year I do a Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and a Swan Lake."

The Swan Lake was not to be.

But Fredrikson counted The Nutcracker among his favourite ballets - "because of its score, although the plot is a bit of a mess".

When he first heard Harris' suggestion of setting the second act in a children's hospital, Fredrikson flashed back to seeing the National Health Department wards, a familiar part of his less than robust childhood.

"What a place to put Clara," he exclaimed. "How horrible."

But his design is far from horrible. It enlivens Harris' and Burnett's giddy and gorgeous choreography, and whisks Clara away on her flying hospital bed to a land of hallucinatory dreams, where by some trickery the nurses' blue uniforms become the costumes of Arabian exotics, the tea lady does the tango and romance is rich in subplots involving handsome young doctors and said nurses.

The grand pas de deux is performed by Clara's parents with true 30s glamour, a la Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

And Sir Jon Trimmer plays the role of Matron "with the biggest bosom in the world (after Hattie Jacques and Pam Ferris)".

For the first time in his life, Fredrikson said, he used primary colours in this Nutcracker and colours that had never crossed his palette before - including "lime green and purple - but I think it absolutely works".

There are no tutus, as such, but the snowflakes have "puff balls" and the art deco-ish colour coding - Clara's family was "the purple family" in Fredrikson's mind - is broken for the pas de deux highlight, when the Mother wears a "handkerchief dress in pale blue chiffon, trimmed with silver, as part of the snow sequence".

Fredrikson's favourite piece of the design is "Clara's dress, a real little girl's dress with a bit of a frill, in mustard and mauve organza - like something from a fashion catalogue of the day. It really captures the flavour of 1931; epitomises the period."

What: The Nutcracker
Where and when: Aotea Centre, Dec 7-11