Saratoga News

Point of View

Carl Heintze

'Nutcracker' tradition continues and continues...

At the risk of great psychic harm, I have to report that I have had about as many Nutcrackers as I can handle.

I say this with some trepidation because The Nutcracker has become something sacrosanct, an icon, beyond criticism, a part of the national psyche. It's just there, and to suggest that it ought not to be is to invite serious attack. Nevertheless, the charm of The Nutcracker, at least for me, has begun to pale.

I can't believe there are those who are unaware of The Nutcracker ballet by Tchaikowsky, but in case you are, let me say that it has become an integral part of the American celebration of Christmas.

I'm not quite sure why this is so, but every Yuletide these days, countless productions are mounted on stages across the nation. Television has contributed even more productions.

The Nutcracker's story, like a lot of ballets', is pretty simple.

A girl named Clara is presented with a nutcracker in the shape of a soldier as a Christmas present by a mysterious visitor and has a dream about it in which all sorts of things good and bad appear, after which she wakes up to reality and the real nutcracker.

Don't ask why a girl would want a nutcracker, especially a nutcracker in the shape of a soldier, for a Christmas present. Perhaps things were different in Tchaikowsky's day.

That, in any event, is the story, and there are ample places for ballet embellishments, so many, in fact, that the story line now and then disappears altogether.

But it's a dream, so who cares?

My close acquaintance with the ballet comes about because of my granddaughters. One has appeared in three productions, a second made her debut this year, but presumably there will be repeat performances--there always are.

The first granddaughter-ballet dancer starred first as a cookie. Starred may be too strong a word. She dashed in and out from beneath the skirt of a very large woman in one scene with about 29 other cookies, all dressed and made up exactly alike. My task as a grandparent in this particular production was to try to tell which cookie she was and thus applaud at the proper time.

Succeeding annual appearances have been as a mouse--she wore a mask which covered her face, making identification even more difficult; and as a Christmas tree ornament--or maybe it was as a statue bearing a very large candle.

This latter role, her last in The Nutcracker, as it happened, was the best from my point of view because I could identify her and thus applaud wildly. She was a star, after all.

Now she has advanced to more modern times and last Christmas appeared in Los Gatos High School's Broadway musical extravaganza, where I not only liked the music better but could tell who she was and what she was doing.

And having seen Clara through at least three Christmases and possibly more, I thought I could relax and would no longer have to puzzle as to whether there was some deeper meaning in the ballet that I had missed. (I don't think there is, but these days one can never be certain.)

I also had gotten to know such story as there is to the ballet well, and I had given up pondering why it has become such an important part of American Christmases. (Other than the giving and receiving of presents, I can't figure out what the tie is.)

I thought that this Christmas I might be exempt, that perhaps I might instead shuffle off to listen to Amahl and the Night Visitors, Menotti's opera about the little boy with the crutches following the Three Wise Men, or just hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing Christmas carols or maybe attend a Handel's Messiah sing-along--even though I can't sing.

Alas, it was not to be. Another granddaughter, the cousin of the Los Gatos star of stage, screen and television, is appearing in yet another Nutcracker, this one in San Luis Obispo. So it appears I will once again become acquainted with Clara and her nutcracker boyfriend, plus the host of other characters who inhabit the stage during its production. What's more, I'll have to go farther to endure it.

However, I promise not to whisper details of the plot to my neighboring seatmate, to applaud in the correct places and, finally, not to fall asleep before it is over.

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