The city’s other Nutcrackers have packed up and gone, but one singular production remains: “Nutcracker Rouge,” an opulent, racy take on the holiday tale that straddles the 18th and 21st centuries.
Performed in a former tow-truck warehouse in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens, Company XIV — founded in 2005 by Juilliard graduate Austin McCormick — combines baroque flourishes with burlesque sensuality. Just how erotic is it? Enough so that no one under age 16 will be admitted.
Those who are in the audience get to be in the party scene, milling around a banquet table set with wine, fruit and cookies. Enter Drosselmeyer — our host and narrator — who tells the story of his goddaughter Marie-Claire as she journeys through a snowstorm made of soap bubbles to the Kingdom of the Sweets, a land guarded by two wolves in baroque dress and gilt masks.
The action unfurls with a series of numbers that veer toward vaudeville: Turkish Delight, Spanish Chocolate (featuring a masked señorita) and the S&M-tinged Black Licorice — all danced to recordings of Vivaldi, Duke Ellington (his Nutcracker remix) and the Tchaikovsky original.
Though Marie-Claire, played by the fiery and flexible Laura Careless, is an adult, it’s a little creepy that she’s introduced to all of this by her godfather. Nevertheless, she and David Martinez’s Nutcracker Prince dance a beautiful, unconventional grand pas de deux to the traditional Tchaikovsky score.
All the dancers are good, but the choreography’s less focused and overpowered by the visuals. Drosselmeyer is an acting role, one that has Jeff Takacs hobbling around in thigh-high stiletto boots Eddie Izzard would kill for. Still, his approach is a little too American emcee and not enough elegant baroque.
Several sections are wondrous, including the opening and the Dance of the Macaroons, with trapezes descending from nowhere.
But magic makes you greedy. “Nutcracker Rouge” starts seemingly as an allegory of Marie-Claire’s awakening into adulthood, but some of the wonder wears off when it settles for burlesque.
Still, it’s worth experiencing McCormick’s sumptuous, stunning vision created out of recycled materials, gold paint . . . and ingenuity.
