Nutcracker! (2003)

Act I is set in a Dickens-type orphanage, rather than in a middle-class living room. This version is intended to be partly comical, but some ballet diehards and purists, not to mention grandparents and Tchaikovsky lovers, may be seriously offended at the way the story is treated in this production. It is apparently intended to poke fun at the ballet. Children will have absolutely no idea what the real "Nutcracker" is like if they see this version first. There is much sexual innuendo here, and it is raunchy and vulgar rather than erotic, but it is played mostly for laughs, even though we still get to hear Tchaikovsky's music. All of the dancers are adults; there are no real children in this production. The Nutcracker, which, after coming to life, looks like a ventriloquist's dummy, does not turn into a Prince, but into a shirtless, muscular "hunky guy" who smiles leeringly at the audience when Clara responds to him, as if to say, "Look at this cutie who is lusting after me." The couple's first dance is flagrantly suggestive but not really romantic, and curiously enough the kiss between Clara and her male hunk does not carry nearly the same impact as the kiss between Masha and the Prince near the end of Act II of "The Nutcracker" (2008) (V), (known as the Mariinsky version), which is quite controversial, but is as romantic as it is sensual.

The "divertissement" dances in Act II are quite suggestive, with the cigarette-smoking Arabian dancer blatantly trying to "put the moves" on Clara, while she, in turn, acts as if she were terrified of being raped by him.

Fritz brandishes a supposedly toy pistol during the Christmas party, but it goes off and we hear a shot. One of the orphans falls over, apparently either wounded or killed, but we don't know if that is really the case, and nothing is done about it.

The Arabian dancer smokes and dances with a cigarette clenched between his teeth.

There is also some gluttony here, with several dancers suggestively licking the walls of Princess Sugar's palace, which is, needless to say, made partly of sugar.