Alternative Nutcracker
Wales Millennium Centre
Weston Studio
Wales Millennium Centre has championed what it calls alternative shows loosely based on the traditional panto genre.
This year it was an alternative Nutcracker.
The Weston Studio was set up cabaret style. The significance of what was hanging on the walls was unclear.
While this genre generally combines excellent circus skills, burlesque, lots of humour, wrapped up in a morality tale that, while of course risqué, maintains a Christmassy feel.
Not so with this show.
Its theme can be summed up by the middle finger being shown to anyone outside this apparently alternative milieu. This would be fine if it has great theatre, cabaret, entertainment. To be so strident in a show, you need to get the basics right.
The circus skills are minimal with some juggling, a little bit of aerial work in a suspended hoop, the burlesque is a strip tease down to swirling tassels on nipples.
Musically it is interesting with original compositions, and entertaining guitar playing, and support from Sam Roberts, although the songs are rather wordy and long for this sort of entertainment.
The most pleasant music was the rearrangements of the Tchaikovsky score, and I do hope audience members knew what they were listening to.
The conceit is the Toy Soldier wanting to partner up with the Rat King rather than be the enemy. That is about it. For some reason we have a baddie who does a rather passe Margaret Thatcher impression in order to tell the Toy Soldier to play a more traditional role and protect Marie, who never appears.
Being dubbed an alternative show, we have Queermas and the unnecessary f’ing this and f’ing that didn’t add anything to the show.
Heledd Watkins from HMS Morris did a good job musically but there were so many dos and don’ts including cross your arms if you did not want to be approached by performers and the importance of consent. It was clear we were there to be lectured, and dissent was not an option.
There was support from Rotten Peach as a quiet little moth, Daisy Williams as what I think was an LED spider. They, and Roche played by Heledd Watkins, appear to be living with the Rat King in Le Crack in some sort of cabaret club that was under threat. Diomede plays the Tin Soldier. The most entertaining contributions were from Cadbury Parfait as Sugar, a reference to the Sugar Plum Fairy and then the 1980s Prime Minster.
However, the audience lapped it all up, although afterwards some quietly told me they couldn’t follow the action and they preferred the previous format of WMC alternative shows based on circus skills.
This is aimed at a particular audience so, unless it appeals, give it a miss. Having said that as a gay man reviewing purely on artistic value, it still did little for me.