In satiric grip of ‘Nutcracker!’

Often a haven for the most groundbreaking theater, music and dance in the Southland, Royce Hall isn’t exactly “Nutcracker” territory. Indeed, no production of the Christmas classic has been seen there since the mid-1980s -- and that anomaly was not a UCLA-sponsored event.

But now through New Year’s weekend, the UCLA Live series is decking Royce Hall with Matthew Bourne’s startling anti-”Nutcracker” “Nutcracker!,” an inspired, endearing attempt to satirize the bourgeois values that standard versions celebrate and to find a genuine expressive core in the work.

At the Orange County Performing Arts Center, where the New Adventures production played eight performances starting Dec. 7, the overall look of the staging took precedence. In the more intimate Westwood venue, however, dancer interaction has become more prominent, and Friday’s principals proved especially adept at making the audience believe in Bourne’s radical take on the traditional characters.

From our first glimpse of her during the overture, Shelby Williams seemed not just ideally winsome as Clara but energetic enough to fight for her dreams and skillful enough to domi- nate group passages with her dancing.

Scott Ambler, alternately henpecked and officious as Dr. Dross in Act 1 and extravagantly pleased with his new identity as a dancing personification of raspberry sherbet in Act 2, embraced the satiric excesses of Bourne’s “Nutcracker!” with passionate devotion.

As the conniving Sugar (the ballet’s other woman), Anjali Mehra exuded frosty allure and danced faultlessly, though Philip Willingham as her brother, Fritz, often stole their scenes by combining the cutesy-poo mannerisms of every child star in history with a Napoleonic ego all his own.

In the title role, Adam Galbraith partnered adroitly and made the most of his rather splintered Act 2 solo, but the character’s sustained passivity in the hands of Sugar represents one Bourne concept that doesn’t play. He’s not worth Clara’s angst and effort if he’s just a spineless boy-toy, and you wait in vain for him to deliver Sugar’s much-deserved comeuppance.

Other Friday principals were reviewed in these pages when the production premiered in Orange County.

Very loud, canned Tchaikovsky again accompanied the dancing.

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‘Nutcracker!’

Where: Royce Hall, UCLA

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Dec. 27-30; 7 p.m. Sunday;

2 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, Sunday, Dec. 29-30 and Jan. 1-2

Price: $35 to $75

Contact: (310) 825-2101 or www.UCLALive.org