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Scott Simon's Essays
Sugar Plum Fairy-in Waiting
Dec. 22, 2001 -- I want to play the Sugar Plum Fairy. You got a problem with that?
My wife and I were walking by Lincoln Center a few weeks ago and we noticed the long green banner overhead that says, `George Balanchine's "The Nutcracker" with the New York City Ballet.' `Notice, darling,' my wife said, `that means, once again, "The Nutcracker" without you.' For several years now I've been openly campaigning to be cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy. I understand that I may not be the obvious choice. I'm suggesting some creative alternative casting here. Like getting Jim Carrey to play Eleanor Roosevelt. I've been rehearsing, working, building toward the role. Robert De Niro ate pot roast and cream puffs and batted his head against bricks to play Jake La Motta. I've been eating celery and consomme and ramming my head into my hamstrings to play the Sugar Plum Fairy.
This is not to say that Maria Kowroski with the New York City Ballet, Maia Wilkins of the Chicago's Joffrey or Mireille Hassenboehler with the Houston Ballet aren't deft in affecting their interpretations. But why should one of the great roles of the ballet always be played by a succession of skinny 19-year-old European girls? I think the role demands a little Midwestern gravitas.
The Sugar Plum Fairy, after all, welcomes Clara into the Land of Sweets. She, or he, as I'm suggesting, shows her around. He makes an exotic, unreal place more comprehensible. The Sugar Plum Fairy introduces Clara to the Nutcracker Prince, to that nice couple, Spanish Chocolate. He networks. He says, `Arabian Coffee? Thank you for being with us. And now the three Russian Cossacks. Coming up, Mother Ginger, Morning Butterfly and the four Dresden dolls.
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