The Nutcracker and the Mouse King - NO spoilers

[Jalilah]

Melanti wrote: "Think how creepy even Peter Pan was.

I never got into the mood to re-read this book this Christmas, but I don't recall it being especially creepy."

I found the 7 headed mouse king creepy.

[Kelsey]

I can't remember whether I'd ever actually read this when I was younger, or if I just looked up the synopsis at some point out of curiosity. Anyways, I knew enough about how the story was different from the ballet to expect it to be weird, but I was surprised at how fantastically weird it was, in a good way. It also struck me as being layered and a bit open to interpretation, and I wished I had taken the time to read it a little more slowly and carefully to parse it.

(view spoiler)[It's got an extended story-within-a-story, which is a structure I've got a soft spot for, and it's also got this thing going on where it's hard to tell where the lines are between reality and fever dream. It's like the whole story takes place inside a child's bizarre imagination, and it's up to you to decide whether it's all "real" or not, whatever that even means. And then it's got this full-fledged portal fantasy thing tacked on the end out of nowhere! Spectacular!

As I mentioned in the nominations thread, I grew up seeing the Sendak-designed Nutcracker production at PNB that his illustrated version of the book was published to accompany, so I got a big nostalgia kick from seeing the illustrations that were actually scenic and costume designs re-purposed, and had a great time discovering the images that were new to me.

Of course, as a result of growing up seeing the Sendak production of the ballet each year, some of the creepiness and ambiguity of the story was familiar. That production (now retired) incorporated Pirlipat as a nightmare Clara has that haunts her, and also had her grow up to be danced by an adult in Act 2 (taking all the dances usually given to the Sugar Plum Fairy). At the end of the ballet, she woke up as a child again in her own bed. So the first time I saw the Balanchine version as an adult, I naturally thought the whole thing was sugar-coated sacrilege!

One of the things that has started to make me uncomfortable about many versions of the ballet as an adult is all the weird racist orientalism. I was slightly displeased to discover some of this in the original Hoffmann text. I wanted to blame it entirely on the Tchaikovsky score with its "Arabian" and "Chinese" variations... (hide spoiler)]

I've labelled most of this as a "spoiler" since there doesn't seem to be another discussion thread.

[Margaret]

Thanks for the history of the ballets! I've only seen it twice, and the Balanchine version.

[Lynden]

Yes, the Balachine ballet does seem very sugar coated! Sendak's pictures really match the creepiness of the Hoffman story, so it's good to hear they got used in one production.