Irish Timeswriters look at The Nutcrackerat the NCH and Unravelling the Ribbonat Project Cube
The Nutcracker, National Concert Hall, Dublin
There's nothing quite as spell-binding as The Nutcracker, where toys come to life, magical clocks turn back time and an innocent girl travels to the land of sweets to see peppermint sticks dance and reindeers fly.
Ever since The Nutcrackerpremiered at the Maryinksy Theatre in Russia in 1892, it has captivated the imagination of generations of audiences, drawn into the world of ETA Hoffmann's story about Clara, a young girl who receives a Nutcracker doll for Christmas and embarks on a life-changing adventure with him.
Part of the ballet's appeal rests in its ability to lure adults and children into the dream, and most companies mix imaginative choreography with Tchaikovsky's luxurious score until the magic onstage makes you believe similar enchantment happens in real life. Such is this fairy tale's power.
That kind of wide-eyed optimism and hopefulness sadly went missing in Ballet Ireland's production, which opened with a sparse set continuing into a lacklustre land of sweets. No elaborately wrapped presents waited under the tree and no dazzling ornaments hung from it. During the Waltz of the Flowers, not a single flower adorned the dancers' drab grey costumes. This production magnified how Nutcrackerdevotees take for granted at least a little bit of sparkle and spectacle. Where other ballet companies may be accused of too much sugary-sweetness, this version looked more like a cake with no icing.
The well-trained cast members did their best to eke out a narrative from the thin choreography, but it became disheartening to see Ryoko Yagyu as Clara repeat the same arabesque step so many times, especially given her apparent technical and artistic range.
Guest artists Mariane Joly and Rainer Krenstetter (currently soloists with the Staatsballett Berlin) came closest to matching the music with their dancing as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince, but even so, the grand pas de deux paled against the bleak backdrop.
Since The Nutcrackeris primarily a children's ballet, hopefully youngsters attending this rendition will go away feeling pleased with having spent a night out past their bedtime; little existed to send them home with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. This Nutcrackerwas more about going through the motions than creating magic, and being given more of the ordinariness and less of the wonder we experience every day. Christie Seaver
Unravelling the Ribbon, Project Cube, Dublin
It is a dark day for Lyndsey when she discovers, with heavy despondency, that she has failed her recent breast examination. The fact that she is just 11, and the failure in question is to locate any breasts, may not lessen her trauma, but as the beginning of Mary Kelly and Maureen White's new drama it offers us some relief, spelling out its writers' intentions to deliver something more subtle and lively than an issue drama.
The title, though not nearly as ingenious, also signals a desire to plumb deeper than the agenda of awareness groups or a charities. This co-production from Gúna Nua and new company Plan B is sponsored by Avon Breast Cancer Crusade and Action Brest Cancer, but that has not ushered it towards breast-check didacticism. For as much as it is a play about breast cancer, told by three generations of female characters through interlacing monologues, it is more moving for its depiction of the psychological obstacles to honest communication.
When she discovers a lump in her breast, for instance, Lyndsey's mother, Rose, feels excited: "Maybe Mike will stand up and pay attention now." Played with quiet dignity by Kelly, Rose is appalled at her own response, but there is something liberating in a play that refuses to parse private thoughts. (Lyndsey, her self-absorbed prepubescence convincingly wrought by Georgina Miller, has an even less sentimentalised reaction: "Just when I thought my life couldn't get any worse!") How these lives come to connect with that of Lola, a fiery spirit who has recovered from breast cancer, played with salty humour by Eleanor Methven, is delayed for as long as the narrative can bear, but in Kelly and White's play, isolation is the point.
For all its unvarnished depiction of cancer treatment, from the mammograms to the biopsies, the chemotherapy to the mastectomies, the real threat of cancer - and here it might have been important to open this out to all forms of the disease - is an inward retreat. Lola has pushed her partner away, communication between Rose and her husband deteriorates, no one is talking to one another and, refreshingly, the monologue form reinforces that theme.
Elegant in its construction and touching in its effect, the play suffers nonetheless from a three-act structure, as though both writers served to refine the speech, but neither could bear to edit it. As director, White just about maintains an easy, involving pace and the hard-earned hope of the play's conclusion becomes less an act of unravelling than one of binding people together. Until Nov 10th Peter Crawley
