Review: ‘The Nutcracker’ by the Joffrey Ballet tugs the heartstrings — whether it’s your first time or 51st

For many families, a trip to “The Nutcracker” is a nonnegotiable holiday tradition — as time-tested and treasured as “A Christmas Carol.” Much like the Dickensian play is to theater, “Nutcracker” is the lifeblood of American ballet companies. It’s a pact made annually between artists and audiences that, for many companies, sells the tickets that keep the lights on.

Americans love “Nutcracker” because it’s an unwavering treatise about dreams coming true. Dreams are kind of our thing. So ballet companies keep doing it. And we keep loving it.

Joffrey Ballet’s version of the holiday classic opened Saturday afternoon, with performances continuing through Dec. 27 at the Lyric Opera House.

Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon had big shoes to fill, reimagining Robert Joffrey’s weathered, traditional version in 2016 with a hyperlocal bent. Children’s author Brian Selznick’s libretto overlaps E.T.A Hoffmann’s tale about a young girl who falls asleep and enters a magical kingdom of candy and fairies with Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

The pairing fits like a glove, even when a gun-toting, rope-slinging Edson Barbosa appears as Buffalo Bill in the second act.

Immigrants Marie, brother Franz and their single mother live in a shantytown on the edge of Jackson Park near the fairgrounds. Fair workers gather for a humble holiday party and get a surprise visit from a Daniel Burnham-type figure called the Great Impresario. They exchange gifts, dance and make merriment out of paper masks and steampunk-esque shadow puppetry. The Impresario flatters Mother and the children, giving Marie a special nutcracker doll.

This “party scene,” as it’s known colloquially, is chock full of tiny details, which have become more evident as the ballet marinates in Joffrey’s capable hands (and feet). A few subtle changes feel big to this critic, most notably a richer instrumentation of the Grandfather Dance near the end of this scene (though this “Nutcracker” has no grandparents). Wheeldon initially stripped the score to the three uncredited Lyric Opera Orchestra musicians who join the dancers on stage as party guests (and do a bang-up job playing the part). It made sense: working-class immigrants obviously wouldn’t have had an entire orchestra in their living room. But “The Nutcracker” is not often, if ever, about common sense. It’s about magic. And wonder. And dreams. Tchaikovsky’s music, as it’s written, is wonderful. What comes after, when Marie falls into Dreamland, is the magic.

In just her first season, Anabelle de la Nuez debuts as Marie, her petite frame and porcelain features matching the childlike innocence she brings to the role. Joffrey veteran Alberto Velazquez also gets a new part, in his first outing as the Great Impresario. Opposite Velazquez is Amanda Assucena as Mother and the Queen of the Fair of Marie’s dream, fashioned after the Statue of the Republic. Rounding out the leads, José Pablo Castro Cuevas dances lead cast for the first time as Peter, assistant to the Impresario and Marie’s crush. Castro Cuevas is having the season of his career, thus far, as is Sheppard Littrell, a Joffrey Academy student who tackles frisky Franz fresh off his run as William in Liam Scarlett’s “Frankenstein.”

Among all this merriment is an ominous rat catcher (Dylan Gutierrez), who hunts feisty rodent puppets designed by Basil Twist. This, of course, foreshadows Marie’s dream. In an “Alice in Wonderland”-type move, the Christmas tree grows. Rats and toy soldiers under the tree become life-size. Marie’s nutcracker, now half-human, half-doll (danced by Maxwell Dawe) and a rat king (stupendously captured by Gutierrez) do battle, the doll coming out ahead and transforming into Castro Cuevas as a handsome prince who transports Marie to a magical kingdom.

On the way there, they hit winter weather. Awe and wonder peak in the snow scene, which is brighter, frostier and, I dare say, snowier than ever.

That Wheeldon continues to tweak and refine his ballet encourages those of us who watch it year after year. And it becomes an ever more magical spectacle for those encountering this “Nutcracker” for the first time. For Joffrey’s part, it cannot be danced better, yet sections of Wheeldon’s choreography remain awkward and unwieldy. No ballerina should be asked to splat to the ground and spin around on her rear end in a tutu — certainly not one tasked with doing so earnestly and gracefully. Somehow, they do. Lest that sound too negative, it’s worth repeating that this scene is intensely beautiful and infused with unflappable joy — turned up to 11 when a corps of tiny “snow babies” flit through this winter wonderland.

Much of “Nutcracker’s” second act is, like the World’s Fair, an exposition, with multicultural variations framed after the Midway, a set of pavilions introducing fair visitors to global cultures Americans could not have otherwise learned about at the time. Standout performances include Gutierrez and Jeraldine Mendoza in the silky, sensual Arabian variation and the aforementioned Barbosa’s satirical impersonation of Buffalo Bill Cody. But the real stars of the second act are a corps of dancing walnuts, whose shells crack open from time to time to reveal ridiculously charming children grinning and winking at the crowd from beneath fuzzy, hooded nut meat leotards. Fernando Duarte adds the right amount of camp as drag persona Mother Nutcracker overlooking these nuts and a crop of pint-size dancing soldiers.

As Impresario, Velazquez is a perfect partner to Assucena in the ballet’s penultimate variation: a labyrinthine pretzel in dance form which this pair manages to make perfect. And in homage to one of the 1893 World’s Fair’s greatest innovations, the typical Waltz of the Flowers is inspired by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.’s carnival creation.

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But when Marie wakes, she realizes the dream is not some fairyland. It’s right in front of her at the breakfast table.

Lauren Warnecke is a freelance critic.

Review: The Joffrey Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” (3.5 stars)

When: Through Dec. 27

Where: Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive

Running time: 2 hours with an intermission

Tickets: $36-$198 at 312-386-8905 and joffrey.org