Playwright: adapted from E. T. A. Hoffmann's story
At: Cultural Center Studio Theater
Phone: ( 773 ) 635-0109; $15
Runs through: Jan. 8
By Jonathan Abarbanel
Tom and Jerry cartoons notwithstanding, nobody likes rats. Even in modern American cities with rodent eradication programs, infants die of rat bites. In early 19th Century European cities—fetid and frequently still medieval—rodent infestations were epidemic. It's no wonder that rats and even cute little mice recur as fearsome figures in fantasy literature of the era.
Writing in the early 1800s, fantasist E. T. A. Hoffmann made a rodent the villain in The Nutcracker and the King of Mice, which inspired the popular Tchaikovsky ballet currently on view in various productions. However, the famous ballet heavily edits the story to make it more palatable. In this new non-dance production, Incurable Theater combines live actors with ( mostly ) puppets to render the Hoffmann original in greater detail and more faithfully, most notably with the considerable 'backstory' of how the Nutcracker came to be, and how the mysterious Herr Drosselmeir is linked to it all. There's very little in the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairy—although that may be due to Incurable's adaptation—with most of it occurring within the sometimes-dangerous atmosphere of the family home, the very place where children should feel safe and secure. Incurable thus does us a literary service, if nothing else, in restoring the dark range of the original story.
The production features marionettes, rod puppets, hand-and-rod puppets and shadow puppets of various sizes, plus an excellently masked and costumed actor ( the wonderfully-voiced Ed Dzialo ) as Drosselmeir. These elements are artistically impressive. The shadow puppets, the full-size Nutcracker puppet, and the five-headed Mouse King—each head moves—are especially effective.
However, as seen at a preview performance, there still are considerable technical challenges to be worked out, chiefly slow and clumsy transitions from scene to scene, and from one type of puppetry to another. Each type of puppetry—marionette, hand, shadow—utilized a separate stage, requiring the puppeteers to move from one to another. The obvious solutions—the creation of a truly integrated puppetry stage or more puppeteers—may be beyond the means of a small troupe such as Incurable.
Two other technical issues should be easier to fix. First, the muddy sound quality—the puppeteer voicing the heroine Marie was especially difficult to understand—and the fact that too often several characters were speaking at the same time. Second, the occasional 20th Century locution in the script—such as having the children say 'OK'—in what is presented in a 19th Century setting.
The production is given wonderful support by a live musical trio ( muted trumpet, viola and keyboard/harpsichord ) playing original music by Robert Cruz with an early music flavor. Smoothing out the technical issues, and shaving a few minutes off the script ( it shouldn't need an intermission ) are all this show needs to become a stand-out holiday treat.
