The tree goes up nine metres in ninety seconds
A note on the single most-serviced object in the building, and why we still will not replace it.
The growing tree in Act I of The Nutcracker is original to the 1974 rebuild. It is a steel telescopic mast with four nested sections, counterweighted, and it rises nine metres in ninety seconds while a hundred and eleven fabric branches unfold on hinged arms.
It is inspected before every single performance — not every day, every performance, including the second show on a matinee day. The inspection takes twenty-five minutes and is signed off by two people.
We have twice been quoted for a modern replacement with a linear actuator and a soft-start controller. Both times we have declined, for an unglamorous reason: the 1974 mechanism fails slowly. Something binds, someone hears it, and the tree stops. The proposed replacements fail the way modern machinery fails, which is suddenly and completely, with a nine-metre mast over a stage full of children.