Caisse-Noisette (1999)

None, although Marie does fall in love with the Nutcracker Prince, and he with her. During the Apotheosis at the end, he touches her shoulder affectionately and she caresses his face, but that is all. None of the dancing is sexually suggestive in any way whatsoever.

This is not like any "Nutcracker" ever seen; it blends chunks of the original plot with completely new twists in the story. Drosselmeyer is a handsome young man in this version, who functions as a sort of psychologist to Marie, who has suffered severe psychological trauma as a child. The opening scene shows little Marie (about three years old) playing with a nutcracker that her mother, not Drosselmeyer, has given her. Suddenly Russian revolutionaries, dressed in Arabian-looking cloaks and turbans, burst in with scimitars and kidnap the mother. Marie's father is presumably killed offstage.

Years pass and the Christmas party occurs when Marie is about sixteen or so. Instead of toys coming to life at midnight and battling mice, we again see the Russian revolutionaries burst in. This time, they try to carry off Marie, but she drives them off by throwing her Nutcracker at them. (This is how she deals with her inner demons, which have tormented her ever since she witnessed her mother being carried off.) The Nutcracker then explodes, comes to life for a brief second as a Nutcracker, then turns into a Prince.

None. This is a ballet.

None of the events in the story are a dream in this version. The two scenes with the Russian revolutionaries mentioned above are quite intense. The Christmas party may be equally disturbing, since the Stahlbaum family, which has adopted Marie in this version, treats her like dirt.

The end, while not actually frightening, is strange and puzzling. Everybody in Act II except Drosselmeyer , Marie, her mother (with whom she has been reunited) and perhaps the Prince (though we aren't quite sure), starts behaving like a robotic windup toy. Marie is led by Drosselmeyer back to the Mary Poppins-like giant umbrella in which they both have traveled to the Land of Ice and Snow. We cannot tell for sure if Marie and the Prince are together in the umbrella as the ballet ends; to a casual observer it looks as if they aren't.