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‘The Nutcracker on Ice’ transforms Mumbai’s grand theatre into a winter wonderland

Tony Mercer, director of the ongoing NMACC show 'The Nutcracker on Ice,' talks about combining classic tales with figure skating elements.

Stills from 'The Nutcracker on Ice': (Photo: PR handout)

AHEAD of the Christmas celebrations, The Grand Theatre at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) exudes a festive vibe with a tall decorated tree outside and soft red-and-green lights flooding the auditorium whose stage has turned into ice rink for the ongoing show of The Nutcracker on Ice. The famous Christmas ballet about young Clara’s new nutcracker doll transforming into a living prince and battling the Mouse King is reinterpreted under the direction of Tony Mercer and performed by a group of 23 highly-talented skaters gliding to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s timeless composition.

The story of Nutcracker — a retelling of ETA Hoffmann’s 1816 short story by Alexandre Dumas in 1844 — has been a popular Christmas fantasy tale while the music by Tchaikovsky has been popular for over a century. “This story and pieces of music are just eternally loved. My theatre production (which is non-verbal) is not based upon a language but emotions. So, there are no language barriers anywhere,” says the show’s director Tony Mercer. Considered to be a pioneer of theatre-on-ice, he created ‘The Nutcracker on Ice’ with Olympic gold medallist Evgeny Platov and World Champion Maxim Staviski.

The show opens in the home of Clara, who is getting ready for Christmas Eve and receives a gift of a magical Nutcracker doll. That night after Clara falls asleep, giant mice appear. The nutcracker doll, however, comes to life and summons an army of toy soldiers. He defeats the Mouse King after a fierce battle. “You’re always trying to work out: Is it a real story? Or, is it her dream? It has a universal appeal because even if you’re an adult, you still have dreams. That’s what Nutcracker’s about. It’s about openness and dreams,” says Mercer.

Director Tony Mercer (Photo: PR handout)

In 1984, when Mercer watched figure skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean win their Olympic gold medal in Sarajevo with their interpretation of Boléro, a timeless orchestra composed by Maurice Ravel, he was fascinated with their performance that was quite theatrical. “That started me off. Instead of being in a huge ice arena, I wondered if I could get them to perform on a stage,” recalls Mercer, who eventually found a way to do it by building ice rooms on stage and formed Imperial Ice Stars, an ice dance company. After the debut production of Sleeping Beauty on Ice, the company worked on the productions of Swan Lake, Cinderella and Peter Pan, among others.

Each of these shows is preceded by prolonged planning and rehearsals. “I’m from the world of theatre, not ballet. We don’t do ballet on ice. We’re doing theatre on ice by combining the incredible figure skating elements. When I start to create a new show, I take the performers (most of them are skaters) to the stage and I explain to them that they are playing a character. I stage it as I would stage a piece of mime theatre. When I was doing Nutcracker initially, we didn’t go anywhere near ice for about 10 days,” shares Mercer. Once everybody has understood their character, they start working on the choreography.

At Imperial Ice Stars, they are working on developing Beauty and the Beast and Alice in Wonderland as theatrical productions on ice. “We always plan our new shows much in advance. For example, I’ve been trying to write a storyboard for Alice in Wonderland. Even though you all know the story, it has to work for me on ice. Once I’ve got the idea for the story, the process of going from page to stage always takes about two years,” says the director.