Outrage as Gerald Scarfe turns 'The Nutcracker' into a tale of terrorism
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Your support makes all the difference.The children's ballet The Nutcracker has been given a controversial makeover by the caricaturist Gerald Scarfe – featuring an attack by "terrorist" mice armed with Kalashnikov rifles.
The reworking is causing outrage before it has even been staged. The Tory culture spokesman said last night it was tantamount to depicting Father Christmas as a member of al-Qa'ida.
Ever since Tchaikovsky wrote it in 1892, family audiences have adored the tale of the Nutcracker Prince and his encounters with the Snow Queen and Sugar Plum Fairy.
But now, the English National Ballet (ENB) is to dispense with the battles between brightly buttoned toy soldiers and scuttling rats that have been its hallmark.
In their place will be a grim-faced "special forces" battalion and killer mice wearing gas masks and brandishing Kalashnikovs.
The ballet will begin with a nightmarish sequence in which the mice "open fire" after leaping out at the child heroine, Clara, through a giant TV screen.
Scarfe is understood to have hit upon the idea after a conversation with his 11-year-old niece convinced him that terrorism had become part of the "vocabulary" of children.
The ballet is bound to prove controversial in the wake of 11 September. It is also likely to anger purists opposed to the trend towards "modernising" time-honoured classical favourites.
A spokesman for ENB denied that the new production would frighten children, pointing out that the guns were clearly plastic and loaded with nothing more sinister than champagne corks.
"There's nothing gratuitous about it," he said. "It's supposed to be fun. The terrorist sequence only lasts a minute or two, and the guns have pop corks, so the minute you see them it's obvious they are toys.
"The whole point about The Nutcracker is that it's a family ballet about a search for nirvana, but along the way there is a nightmare to get through. It's like real life."
However, John Whittingdale, the Conservatives' culture spokesman, said: "I don't recall terrorists in The Nutcracker before. I would want to be assured that it isn't just being done for shock value, rather than artistic merit. If it is a shock interpretation I hope they will make it absolutely clear in their advertising.
"There will be a lot of parents wanting to take their children and they will be very upset if they are confronted by a radical ballet about terrorism."
The ENB production of The Nutcracker last year captured headlines when it emerged that it was being sponsored by Mattel, the American manufacturer of Barbie dolls.
'The Nutcracker': Hippodrome, Bristol, 10-19 October; Mayflower, Southampton,14-16 November; Christmas season at Coliseum, London, 3 December -4 January
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