Hopefully, I have seven or eight years until I have to suffer through “The Nutcracker” again.
That would be the earliest my granddaughters, Kelbi and Peyton, might be sugar plum fairies. Until then, scratch the ballet from my to-do list.
It’s a boring show, unless your kid is onstage.
When I attended a local production a few holiday seasons back, we made it an all-girls day. I was extremely excited because the spectacle is unabashedly hyped before Christmas. We dressed up. Had great seats. As toy soldiers and that creepy rat-nose guy danced around and around, by the second act, I realized nobody was going to open their mouths.
There was no singing.
No words at all.
Yawn.
If I am going to pay good dough for a ticket to a show, there better be more than pinchy toe shoes. Saturday night we saw Tim Conway and Harvey Korman at the Paramount Theater in Seattle.
The pair gained my adoration as cohorts on “The Carol Burnett Show” from the late 1960s through the 1970s. Their TV show was outrageous with skits about the agonizingly slow Mrs. Wiggins and her boss, Mr. Tudball.
We laughed and laughed Saturday for almost two hours as the humorous pair reprised some of their favorite characters from the Burnett days. They ended the show with a dentist sketch that brought the packed house to their feet.
Now that was a treat. Comedy, singing and dancing. No nutty Clara, prancing Fritz or broken appliances that should only be used to crunch pecan shells.
From what I could tell at the holiday ballet, through a half-open eyeball, Clara gets a nutcracker from her godfather, Drosselmeyer, and it’s the hit of the party scene.
Oh boy, somebody gave me a nutcracker. Everybody waltz.
Fritz got jealous over the silly gift given to his sister. He grabbed the present and broke it. Clara didn’t have to fret because Drosselmeyer fixed the nutcracker with a magic handkerchief.
That was mildly interesting, what with no duct tape. Then the show earned an R rating from me for tacky violence. After midnight, Clara shrinks, an army of icky mice show up and fight toy soldiers.
Clara threw her slipper at the Mouse King.
The audience roared their pleasure.
I briefly came to, wondering if they sold hot dogs in the lobby.
And I am not a ballet snob. This tomboy took lessons for a couple of years, but hated the itchy tutu. I took my daughter to dance class, but she preferred soccer. My son tapped at 5 years old.
In the late 1960s, my high school boyfriend, Jim, secured tickets to see Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn dance “Swan Lake” at the Seattle Opera House.
I was beyond thrilled, even though he couldn’t get Royal Ballet tickets together. One was 20 aisles from the stage, far left, the other was center balcony, pretty good with binoculars. We switched seats at intermission.
I wore little white gloves.
At the Royal Ballet, I couldn’t tell you a thing about Dame Fonteyn. It was all about the lead dancer’s tights and tight is the operable word. One couldn’t take their eyes off Nureyev’s stellar physique.
It looked as though he were wearing a stuffed fanny pack, but he wasn’t.
Nureyev and Fonteyn were the catch tickets of the society season. Jim earned our way working at the Richfield gas station next door to the butcher shop where I lived. I mooned around my second-story bedroom window on Aurora Avenue watching my guy pump ethyl.
Infatuated with culture, we toured museums, art galleries and attended every production of the Seattle Repertory Theater. You could get cheap tickets minutes before show time at a side booth.
We considered ourselves quite the swells.
My buddy Mike Murray, who wrote about the art world for The Herald, says it’s his goal to live long enough to see my granddaughters dance in their first “Nutcracker.”
“And for Grandma to be banned from the performance because of something snotty she wrote in 2006,” Mike says. “So then Uncle Mikey would get to have her seat in the concert hall for a magical, never-to-be forgotten moment.”
Magic, only if Kelbi or Peyton are on the program. I’ll use my ticket, but I better have a long nap before the show.
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
Associated Press
Members of the Royal Ballet perform in “The Nutcracker.”
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