Ten years after Willam Christensen’s Nutcracker premiered, Lew choreographed a new production set in Victorian America in the 1850s. Leonard Weisgard, a children’s book illustrator, designed the scenery and costumes.
“This production was more childlike than Bill’s,” says Nancy Johnson, former administrative director of San Francisco Ballet School and the first Sugar Plum Fairy in the 1954 production. “It had a storybook feeling. The costumes for the children and the mothers in the first act looked like they belonged on paper dolls. Even the tree looked like it was out of a children’s book rather than like a real tree.” The tree appeared flat as it grew, rather than three-dimensional. The audience was nevertheless enthralled.