excerpt from Men Add Juice to Sugar Plums

“The Nutcracker” is chiefly a ballet for women, but there have certainly been other men of note this season. In New York Theater Ballet’s small-scale production on Sunday, both Philip King (in the double role of Drosselmeyer’s Nephew and the Nutcracker Prince) and Steven Melendez (in the double role of Doctor Stahlbaum and the Sugar Plum cavalier) were exemplars of the way good manners and classical grace can turn seemingly formulaic roles into expressions of humanity at its most touchingly chivalrous.