7 December 2024

Last Saturday it was my great pleasure to accompany my wonderful neighbors Anne and Peter and their 6-year-old son Leo to Boston to see Leo’s first Nutcracker.  Tchaikovsky’s confection has loomed large in my personal history, starting with my parents’ providing me a boxed set of 45’s to play on my little record player; I can still picture the pink pointe shoe on the cover.  I loved that music, and was taking ballet at the time, so when my inspired first grade teacher Okla Hawkins decided to mount a production of The Nutcracker, I, completely unencumbered by stage fright and quite eager to display my “talent,” was a natural to be cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy.  Perhaps architecture is destiny.  That academic year, 1957-58, Pasadena Elementary School was without sufficient space for all those boomer babies, so Mrs. Hawkins’s class was held on the stage behind the heavy velvet curtains that separated our classroom from the cafeteria—where dining students were not allowed to speak lest they disturb us.  I remember that space well, both as classroom and as performance venue.  And I remember, too, that the tall, handsome lad Michael whom Mrs. Hawkins cast as the Nutcracker Prince was too petrified to perform, and was replaced by a shorter ginger-haired boy happy to show off—a great disappointment to me.

On Election Night this year, anxiety was running high when my neighbor Anne invited me to cross the woods that separate our homes to enjoy a beverage and some talk by the bonfire she built, her accustomed strategy for coping with fearful uncertainty.  So we were there by the fire when young Leo emerged from the house with kazoo and tambourine, and proceeded to entertain us by kazooing selections from The Nutcracker Suite.  Tonic hilarity ensued, and I was delighted not only by Leo’s performance by also by the recognition that here was another set of parents devoted to nourishing their child with music and performance, as mine had me.  When Leo went back in, I asked Anne if Leo had seen the ballet, and when she replied no, but she thought it was time, our plan was hatched.

And so, we were off on our adventure on a cold but bright day in Boston.  Our first stop was for lunch at an all-gluten-free bakery called Verveine on Mass Ave in Cambridge, the place packed with treats each more enticing than the next, as well as an overflowing supply of customers awaiting their orders and/or one of the few places to sit down at one of the communal tables.  Staff and customers were all friendly and accommodating despite the crush and bustle, and my apple/cheese/arugula focaccia was delicious, inspiring an oft-repeated lament that our own nearby university town of Durham, NH had no bakeries, gluten-free or otherwise.

Then it was time to set out for the Opera House, and for me to relish NOT being the one driving for a change.  I’d advised Anne to take advantage of Spot Hero, the parking app I’d discovered in the last year, a great stress-reliever in the quest to find parking in Boston, as one books it in advance.  I’d also learned the hard way that one should not access said booked parking spot even one minute ahead of the agreed parking time or pay twice, so when we arrived at the garage 2 minutes early, I suggested Anne just “go round the block”—forgetting that blocks are a concept unknown in Boston.  Next thing you now, we are headed south under Boston harbor on I-93, and what had seemed a perfectly timed, stress-free arrival now threatened a too-late entrance.  But doughty Anne sallied on:  working with three different cell phones, we navigated our way back to the Common and the corner of Essex and Washington, where Anne dropped off the three of us to make our way to the theatre in good time while she continued on to the parking garage.

The Citizens Opera House holds 2677 souls, and so there was another crush negotiating the metal detectors into the lobby.  But Leo needed to make a stop at the box office.  Knowing that we would be treated to a backstage tour after the show—my friend Elizabeth Olds is assistant to Boston Ballet’s artistic director, Mikko Nissinen—Leo had constructed a nutcracker out of a paper towel tube supplied with googly eyes and drawn-on peppermints alternating red and green for buttons.  This he hoped to give to the REAL Nutcracker Prince after his performance.  But one of the googly eyes had come off.  So with help from box office staff and patient dad Peter, who showed his son how to make single-sided tape double-sided, Leo restored his paper nutcracker’s sight and we made our way up the several flights of stairs to left balcony B.  Heroic Anne arrived from the parking garage just as the lights were dimming and the magic began, Leo clasping his nutcracker.

And indeed, even at that distance from the stage, the music and dance were completely captivating.  The sassy bear and mechanical-jointed doll inspired laughter, the battle of mice compelled.   The snowflakes—balletic and fireproof paper alike—enchanted.  Catching sight of a cloud descending from the flies to carry Clara and her prince away at the end of Act 1, Leo voiced an audible “Oh, my!” and warmed the hearts of every adult in the vicinity.  Intermission offered a chance to get the wiggles out and to confer with Elizabeth, who surreptitiously passed along to Yue Shi, dancing the Nutcracker Prince at that matinee performance, that he had a fan in the balcony.  And Act 2 delivered all the favorites:  including the most sensuous Arabians I’ve seen, Mother Ginger, and the Grand Pas de Deux.

As the audience streamed for the exits, we descended to the bottom stage left exit from the balcony where Elizabeth, former principal dancer in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and herself once a Sugar Plum Fairy, met us and showed us in sequence the Queen’s Box (terrible sightlines!), the snowflake remnants littering the wings (some of the little squares are mylar for sparkle), the prop table with Clara’s crown on its cushion.  (How does it stay in place, both on the cushion and on Clara’s head?  Magnets!).  Chyrstyn Fentroy, soon to be that evening performance’s Sugar Plum Fairy, was warming up, and kindly stopped to inquire about the nutcracker Leo held.  We posed on stage.  The view from there is an epiphany.

Stage right we saw the steps Mother Ginger has to climb to step into his stilts, directly below the rigging that lowers his 40-pound costume around him so all the Boston Ballet School students can hide beneath “her” skirts.  Then to orchestra pit, where we got the conductor’s view of the house as well as the music and some instruments left behind till the next show, and learned the trick of the children’s chorus in the snow scene (the organ, not the kids!).  The stage manager’s screen glowed, and Ms. Fentroy explained the purpose of the rosin she was applying to her pointe shoes (the better to avoid slipping) before rehearsing her upcoming pad de deux.  I learned that the Opera House remains a “hemp house,” still using the centuries-old tradition of using ropes, pulleys, and counterweights to fly the scenery—by hand!  And then, suddenly, there was the Nutcracker Prince, out of costume and appearing as himself, Yue Shi, graciously accepting Leo’s gift of the nutcracker and posing for a memento photo. 

Designed by architect Thomas White Lamb in 1928 as a movie palace, the Opera House was commissioned by Edward Albee Sr. as a tribute to his friend and business partner, Benjamin Franklin Keith.

Elizabeth led us on through the costume shop:  mice heads, soldier heads, and glittery tutus.  Wardrobe manager Heather even retrieved the Mouse King Head for our appreciation (honestly, its realism could be the stuff of nightmares).

Finally, we said our thanks and goodbyes, and headed out of the theatre, shedding magic as we walked through the now-dark Boston streets searching out the pedestrian entrance to the parking garage.

As Anne pulled into my driveway, I was cataloging all of the day’s delights, including “sitting next to you, Leo.”  There was a pause as Leo considered this.  Then he said:   “I didn’t even know who was sitting next to me.  I couldn’t see anything but the dancers.  I couldn’t look away from them!” 

I later texted this review to my generous friend Elizabeth, who replied, “Oh, this makes my heart happy.  Leo and his wonder is what it’s all about.”

I can’t imagine a better Christmas gift.