The Nutcracker: An Index and my Top Five

Between 2011 and this year, I have written blogs about thirty works based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. There are more, of course. Little audio adaptations, stage productions that aren't ballets, little animated video versions thanks to internet video being widespread, and countless more adaptations of the ballet. But given that there are so many, it was important to just say, "this is enough for now."

Perhaps some day, if the mood strikes me, I'll write about more of them. I avoided going to the ballet as many of them have similar if not identical structures, the differences being in the exact choreography and costume and set designs. I made an exception for the Stowell/Sendak adaptation of the ballet as it tried to hew closer to the original Hoffmann story. As such, if I do write about the ballet adaptations, I don't expect to repeat my thoughts.

I feel my more recent writings are better than my 2011 efforts, not just that I've improved my writing style, but I tried to do more research about the versions I was looking into. As such, I discovered more versions and discovered many interesting things about the people involved with the properties.

So, here is a list of the Nutcracker blogs from this year and 2011, arranged in order of their release.

• The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, the story that started it all, my original 2011 blog, and my 2018 blog: Cracking the Shell of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Classic
• Histoire d'un casse-noisette, the French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas
• Carl Reinecke's Nutcracker and the Mouse King suite
• The Nutcracker Ballet, the famous adaptation scored by Tchaikovsky, my original 2011 blog and my more researched 2018 blog.
• Warren Chappell's 1958 Nutcracker picture book
• Dziadek do orzechów (1967), the Polish film adaptation
• Щелкунчик (1973), a Russian animated adaptation
• Caedmon Audio's presentation of Janet Schulman's 1977 adaptation of the story
• The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, Bura and Hardwick's 1978 stop-motion adaptation 
• Nutcracker Fantasy, Sanrio's 1979 stop-motion adaptation
• The Nutcracker, the Kent Stowell and Maurice Sendak 1983 production and its 1986 film
• The Nutcracker, F Production's 1985 puppet adaptation
• The Care Bears Nutcracker Suite, the 1988 Christmas special
• The Nutcracker Prince, the 1990 theatrical animated film
• The Nutcracker, an episode of Funky Fables
• Lamb Chop's Nutcracker Suite, Shari Lewis' 1993 audio adaptation
• The Nutcracker, a 1994 animated adaptation from Storyteller's Classics
• The Nutcracker, a 1995 anime adaptation from Jetlag Productions
• Le Fiabe più Belle. — Lo Schiaccianoci, another 1995 anime adaptation from Toei
• The Nuttiest Nutcracker, a 1999 animated adaptation
• The Nutcracker, a 2000 episode of Hello Kitty's Animation Theatre
• Barbie in the Nutcracker, the 2001 animated film
• Katya and the Nutcracker, a 2001 animated version
• Щелкунчик, a 2004 Russian animated version that was also redubbed in English
• The Secret of the Nutcracker, a 2007 Candadian film inspired by the story
• The Nutcracker in 3D/The Untold Story, the film eventually released in 2010
• The Nutcracker and The Mouse King, an adaptation from BBC Radio
• The Nutcracker Sweet, a 2015 animated adaptation
• Nussknacker und Mausekönig (2015), a German television adaptation
• Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker, a 2017 novel by Gregory Maguire
• The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Disney's 2018 film inspired by the story

In addition, I wrote a blog about my personal feelings about the Nutcracker in 2011 and I wrote up my top five best and five worst adaptations. This year, here are my new top five Nutcracker adaptations:

5. Dziadek do orzechów, the 1967 version follows Hoffmann faithfully and does so delightfully, but is unable to fully immerse itself in fantasy by cutting the scenes in the Land of Sweets.

4. Щелкунчик (1973), the Russian cartoon manages to stay in the top 5 by still being a dialogue-less adaptation with style, smartly timing itself to Tchaikovsky's music.

3. Nussknacker und Mausekönig, this 2015 German television adaptation enters the top five with a solid adaptation that plays a loosely with the story but sticking to the themes of the original and updating the storytelling

2. Nutcracker Fantasy, moving up to the number 2 position, this stop motion version goes full out for fantasy while wholly reworking the plot, but keeps the heart of the story intact.

1. The Nutcracker Prince, this animated adaptation sticks faithfully to Hoffmann's story while smartly reworking it for cinematic effect. It goes even further by fleshing out the cast with some of Clara's toys come to life, in keeping with the original story's moments of Marie talking to her dolls as if they're people.

Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker

After taking on L. Frank Baum's Oz mythos in The Wicked Years series, Cinderella in Tales of an Ugly Stepsister, Snow White in Mirror, Mirror and Alice in Wonderland in After Alice, author Gregory Maguire turned to Hoffmann's Christmas classic in Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker.

What many of these books have in common is that Maguire will select a character or themes and take his own spin on the tale from another perspective, sometimes telling the life story of the side characters.

In Hiddensee, Maguire selects the character of Godfather Drosselmeier from The Nutcracker. (I've not addressed it before, but with the spelling of Drosselmeyer's name varies in different versions. I typically stick to the one with a y, but the one with an i instead is just as valid.)

Maguire's Dirk is a foundling: an abandoned child. He was taken in by a couple who lived in the woods and raised him. As he learns to cut wood, an accident happens, leading Dirk to have a strange experience. After many years, he goes to learn more about the world. As he learns from a minister, he is given his last name: Drosselmeier.

Dirk meets various people through the years, chiefly Felix Stahlbaum, a man who appreciates him for who he is, even if he doesn't fully understand him, and there is even a homoerotic moment between them.

The story returns to a legend of a golden walnut that contains a key, Drosselmeier eventually making a nutcracker that he claims will open the nut one day. It is, of course, this nutcracker that is eventually given to Claire-Marie (or "Klara") Stahlbaum, an imaginative child who Dirk particularly loves.

The book offers a take on the Nutcracker story wholly its own. While Maguire relishes in the mundane looking for fantasy (he describes hair color like "frozen mud" or "melted marzipan"), he creates in Dirk a man who may yet be the mysterious and nearly sinister figure from Hoffmann's original story, but is yet not particularly a bad man, just one who seeks to find more from life than it willingly offers, and in the end, his lone lasting accomplishment is giving inspiration to a child one Christmas Eve.

I found some of the book particularly lengthy with discussions and thoughts about Dirk's past experiences and philosophy filling pages and pages. Yet it goes for just under 300 pages, rendering this on the shorter end as some novels go.

References to other works appear, with Dirk's adoptive mother telling stories to one of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen is mentioned, and it's even mentioned that Dirk has a copy of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This makes it impossible for the story to neatly complement Hoffmann's original story, dating from 1816-1818, while Dickens' famous story was first published in 1843, 21 years after Hoffmann's death. This is rather disappointing as Wicked retells many of the events of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, just from the perspective of the Wicked Witch in a version of Oz different from Baum's, but could arguably be out of the perception of Dorothy.

Another disappointment I had is that Hoffmann's Drosselmeyer is first introduced with his clock repair and his ability to create clockworks. One would think that having a young Dirk become fascinated with clockworks and finding out how they work and mastering them for himself would lend itself well to the storytelling. At over two-thirds of the way into the book, I was wondering if it would come in at all. It finally did, with his mastery of clockwork being briefly mentioned to explain how he made a few toys, especially the clockwork castle from Hoffmann's story that Fritz quickly grows bored with.

Overall, I would only recommend Hiddensee to those familiar with Maguire from his other works. It's not as out there as some scenes in Wicked (if you read it, you know what I mean), and provides an interesting story on its own. As a companion to Hoffmann, it falters in a few areas.

Storyteller's Classics presents The Nutcracker

Here is a half hour animated adaptation, but it's not listed on IMDb. The end credits say it was produced by British company Mad Man Movies for Castle Communications, whose sole IMDb credit is a 1996 Christmas themed special titled Silent Night. This carries a copyright date of 1994, and according to a WorldCat listing, it was released on VHS by the Orion company. A YouTube video transfer of a commercial for the Storyteller's Classics series reveals four other titles in the series: Peter and the Wolf, The Toys' Symphony, and animated adaptations of Tchaikovsky's other ballets: Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, all narrated by Dudley Moore or Helena Bonham Carter. Moore narrates this one, which is animated well and looks nice, but is not "breathtaking animation" as the commercial says.

This adaptation opens with a party at Marie and Fritz's home (yes, they have their original Hoffmann names). A couple of servants are getting everything ready while mice raid the food. Drosselmeyer arrives and among his gifts is of course the Nutcracker, which Fritz breaks some of the teeth off of. The mice spot the Nutcracker and inform their king.

Marie sleeps with her Nutcracker and the mice invade her room to try to steal it. When she gets up to investigate, they scurry away. The Nutcracker comes to life and Marie shrinks. He explains that he was the prince of Candyland who was going to marry a princess, but her father didn't want them to marry, fighting with the prince. When the king gets a wizard to turn the prince into a nutcracker, he refuses to pay for the service, and is turned into a mouse king.

The mice attack the castle Drosselmeyer brought, Marie and the Nutcracker making a stand, but Marie is captured. The Nutcracker manages to free her and they go to Drosselmeyer's workshop, which leads them to Candyland. (Apparently, riding the carousel does it.) The Sugar Plum Fairy brings them to her castle, where she pays the wizard to break the curse on the Nutcracker to restore him to the form of a prince and Marie becomes a princess, while the Mouse King arrives.

Marie confiscates the Mouse King's crown and disposes of it, rendering the king a regular mouse, and the other mice rebel against him. The prince and Marie kiss, then the scene fades to Marie and the Nutcracker still in bed on Christmas morning, but the living room is still a mess from the battle. So was it a dream?

I was reminded a bit of the 1973 Russian Nutcracker while reviewing this one, in which the Nutcracker also tells a different origin story for himself and uses no dialogue (there is a version narrated by Shirley MacLaine, but I haven't seen it). Still, that one had style, deciding to time the animation with the music, while this one just has the music play in the background. It also alters the plot in an unusual twist, what with Marie being imprisoned and later defeating the Mouse King—revealed to be a transformed person who is never restored—just by removing his crown. I can't exactly say it was bad, but it wasn't that great either.

This version seems to be hard to find. Copies pop up on eBay, and it doesn't appear to have been reissued on DVD. I found it on YouTube, the uploader unsure of its origins and their tape starting after the title and possible opening credits had already passed. The sound had an unfortunate loud tape hiss. They claim to have made the video from a DVD transfer of a VHS recording from a TV broadcast. If you're interested in collecting it, copies may be out there, but I wouldn't recommend spending too much on it.

Katya and the Nutcracker: A Christmas Fantasy

I discovered this version of The Nutcracker shortly after completing my 2011 blog series. It's an animated take on the story that uses no dialogue, only sound effects and Tchaikovsky's score for the ballet. It runs for about 25 minutes. I was wondering if Katya was part of a series, but seems this was done to present a more Russian Nutcracker in honor of the Russian roots of Tchaikovsky and the ballet.

This adaptation is set in 1910 St. Petersburg, evident from Russian architecture and some fashions. Katya lives with her father and three other children and an older woman. This might be a grandmother or an aunt, and the other children might be her siblings or cousins. There's a boy and twin girls. This Christmas, the children are given presents, but while the others get toys, there's nothing for Katya. She is happy, however, when her father gives her a nutcracker. (This one has an odd design with an O-shaped body, the nut is put in the opening and the arm is cranked to break the shell.) However, the boy tries to get his turn at it and breaks the arm off. Katya goes to bed unhappily.

That night, she awakens and as she goes downstairs, she shrinks and finds the toys and the Christmas tree being attacked and looted by mice, their leader wearing a gas mask. The toys come to life and fight back, but the tide turns when Katya's cat arrives on the scene and scares the mice away, the leader taking to a toy airplane, but the Nutcracker and Katya aren't willing to let him go without a fight, and all three ride the plane outside, where after a bit, the lead mouse is set flying into the sky with an explosion by Katya pulling a lever on the plane.

To celebrate, Katya and the Nutcracker fly to a fairyland, where the Nutcracker is given a new arm, and they are entertained by many dancing creatures (including a group of mice). The two then head out to a wondrous winter realm, during which time the Nutcracker is turned into a real boy able to ice skate with Katya. They meet icy centaurs before the scene goes back to Katya's bedroom, revealing it to be just a dream, her father placing a repaired Nutcracker on her bed just before she awakens.

As I was writing this, I realized that although we can see a bit of the classic Nutcracker towards the beginning, after that, the story more resembles Raymond Briggs' classic picture book The Snowman in which a child goes off with a magical creature and has a wondrous experience that appears to be only a dream. And sure, this is present in the original Nutcracker story, but given that an animated version of The Snowman is a Christmas staple in the UK and this is a British based production as well, you can't help but wonder if some subtle inspiration happened. Particularly as both animated specials feature no dialogue.

To be fair, the animation is generally well done, though I can't say I care for a lot of the character designs. The story adaptation is no less faithful than a lot of versions of the ballet, and honestly, I'd suggest that if you're interested, give it a watch.

Hello Kitty's The Nutcracker

 Japanese company Sanrio turned to The Nutcracker in 1979 with Nutcracker Fantasy, which I covered back in 2011. But that one had a tiny blink and miss cameo by their most famous creation, Hello Kitty, and wouldn't you know? There's now a Hello Kitty Nutcracker cartoon. This was part of the series Hello Kitty's Animation Theater, released in 2000. Seemingly, Hello Kitty and her friends would be cast as the characters of a story. Note that the stories ran about fourteen minutes and were very kid-friendly.

In this one, Hello Kitty is Clara and Dear Daniel is Fritz. Clara gets the Nutcracker for Christmas, but when Fritz breaks it, Clara takes it to the shop of Drosselmeyer to have it fixed. While she's there, Drosselmeyer tells her the story of how a king had his sausage party (hey, they said it) ruined by the Mouse Queen eating most of the fat for the sausages. When the king sets traps, the Mouse Queen takes revenge by cursing the Princess. A young Drosselmeyer (who the storyteller teases may be a relation) breaks the nut and the curse, but is cursed and rebuffed by the princess for his pains. Drosselmeyer gives her a necklace that he says may help her.

Clara believes this may be her Nutcracker and that night, she finds herself and her Nutcracker transported to an otherworldly landscape where the Nutcracker fights the Mouse King. When Clara tries to help, she's subdued by the Mouse Queen, who's defeated when she uses magic on Clara, but it's repulsed by the necklace. Using the necklace, the Nutcracker defeats the Mouse King and is restored to his true form and takes Clara for a boat ride to the Land of Sweets, where everything is made of sweets. A suddenly shaky boat turns to Clara being shaken awake at home, just in time to meet Drosselmeyer and his nephew Kristoff.

There's not a lot to this adaptation, which offers a slightly abbreviated Story of the Hard Nut. Like Nutcracker Fantasy, Clara actually encounters the Mouse Queen, who has an expanded role. Having recently seen the Funky Fables version, I couldn't help but note that Clara suddenly being pulled into a different landscape to fight the Mouse King happens in both versions. But like Funky Fables, this one is a very inoffensive Nutcracker. Not bad, but not exactly a major one.

Funky Fables: The Nutcracker

Funky Fables was a series by Saban Entertainment that presented some very comically designed anime adaptations of classic fairy tales, from Cinderella and Snow White to The Wizard of Oz and, of course, The Nutcracker. The designs were complemented by whimsical music and comical narration and dialogue.

 In this Nutcracker, Clara and Fritz are anxiously awaiting their Christmas presents, Fritz constantly getting the holiday wrong, and saying he wants a "chicken." (He means a hobby horse.) Well, when all is ready, Fritz gets his "chicken" and Clara gets the Nutcracker, presented to her by Drosselmeyer, who has his eyepatch, a beard and a big hat. She's unimpressed at first until Fritz asks how he's a soldier with no sword. She suggests that maybe he's a nonviolent pacifist.

That night, Clara has been staying up late with the Nutcracker, becoming very fond of him. When she finally goes to bed, she has the Nutcracker tucked in next to her. At midnight, it comes to life as the King of the Mice and a couple of his mice soldiers jump out of her clock, then spotting the Nutcracker next to Clara, they hop into her bed, waking her up. Suddenly she's pulled up into the air and a mysterious door appears behind her and she's pulled through.

Clara spots the Nutcracker fighting a couple mice, then the Mouse King appears behind her. As he grabs her, the Nutcracker leaps to fight him directly. The Mouse King tosses him off, breaking his arm, but Clara manages to escape by biting the King. She then helps the Nutcracker to a cannon and soldier, which they fire at the charging Mouse King, but it doesn't stop him. A magic nut appears in Clara's hand, and on the Nutcracker's suggestion, she throws it at the king, seemingly making him shatter like glass and transporting her back to her bedroom.

The next morning, Clara hears Drosselmeyer calling her upstairs, so she follows and he tells her that the Nutcracker is a prince of "the dream world," transformed by the King of Mice. He suddenly is downstairs leaving and as he leaves, he suggests Clara look at the grandfather clock in the attic, where she finds a sword on the back of the pendulum. She falls asleep shining it up, and her mother finds her and takes her back to bed.

Clara is almost pulled through the mysterious door once again, but fights back and manages to get to the attic, but can't find the sword as the Mouse King has it and grabs her. He uses energy emanating from the sword to torture the Nutcracker, but Clara manages to divert it back to him, making him drop her and the sword, and restoring him to his true form with seven heads. ("He's so full of evil schemes that one head isn't enough to keep track of all of them," the Nutcracker explains.)

The attic fills with mice, but Clara and the Nutcracker manage to get to a beam above them and use the magic of the sword to turn the Mouse King's minions into flowers. Clara swings down and hurls herself at the King, knocking him back, letting the Nutcracker get in the finishing blow with the sword. Giving the Nutcracker the King's crown, he resumes his true form as Prince Bongo of Dream World, which they visit, described as a "flight of fancy to the furthest reaches of the imagination." They go to the castle and join a ball, where they meet Clara's favorite storybook characters.

Waking up the next day, Clara looks out the window and spots Drosselmeyer outside and goes outside to meet his grandson Bongo, who takes her to his kingdom. In a bit of humor, the narrator explains that this happened a long time ago, the kingdom is now an amusement park, the castle is a hotel, but you can visit the penthouse where Clara and Bongo lived happily ever after, "just go to the front desk and ask for... the Nutcracker Suite."

This one's really loose and doesn't really get a lot of the themes of the original story across, but it does maintain Clara's status as a heroine. Funky Fables isn't a series you'd expect a serious adaptation from, so I'll give it a pass. It's not a great adaptation, but it's not an offensive one, either.

F Productions Presents The Nutcracker

I could recall my father checking out a video tape from the library containing some adaptation of The Nutcracker performed by puppets. I could remember very little, except that the puppet depicting Clara didn't look very inviting with large, slanted eyes that made her look annoyed. I recall some announcer introducing "The Waltz of the Flowers," and that was it, really. Thinking harder, I can remember that the Nutcracker seen was just a prop and didn't even come to life.

Well, as I decided to search "Nutcracker" on streaming services to find more adaptations, I came across it on Amazon Prime. There was the Clara puppet, having re-emerged from my childhood memories. So, I decided it was time to look it over again.

Frankly, it's not really worth the half hour it takes to play.

It opens with a puppet of an old man wearing a black robe, and this puppet has a stationary face, while the hands are clearly human hands, and it gives you a quick introduction to the ballet, telling you the music was by Tchaikovsky, the original choreography by Petipa (not that we see it here) and when the original ballet debuted. He further tells us what a nutcracker is and how it works, using the prop Nutcracker. He tells us we won't see the entire ballet, just an abridgement of Act II.

Act II, which famously has no substantial plot. It's the celebration of the Nutcracker's victory, which we don't even get to see here.

The ballet starts with an abridgement of the overture, played by two puppet crickets on a piano. The opening credits said the music was adapted for two keyboards, and that's what you hear here. No grand orchestration.

It shows us Clara walking through the woods to the candy castle, then joining the King and Queen of Sweets. The King introduces each of the dances, which only last a few minutes, filling out the 28 minute run time until the finale, The Waltz of the Flowers. A variety of puppets move in time to the music, and as far as that's concerned, it's well-done and probably good enough to keep young children occupied with the screen.

Overall, this version of The Nutcracker has no story, doesn't present a great version of Tchaikovsky's score and is overall unimpressive. It might have been great back in 1985 for a parent wanting to expose their child to some classic music and the ballet, but in short time, there were animated versions and filmed versions of the ballet, not to mention audio recordings of the music readily available, making for better options.

So, pass on this one.