The Rat King (above) is armed with puppets — and there is much more madness — in Mark Morris’ dark and twisted “The Hard Nut” at BAM.
“The Hard Nut,” Mark Morris’ campy take on “The Nutcracker,” has been a holiday hit for nearly two decades. Re turning to New York on Friday night for the first time in eight years, it sounded great – with Tchaikovsky’s beautiful score played live, accompanied by Brooklyn Youth Chorus. But while the audience ate up the satire, the laughs come with a sneer.
In Morris’ version, the Stahlbaum family lives in a kitschy house from the ’70s; the fabulous designs, all black and white or polyester plaid, are based on the work of comic book author Charles Burns. The towering mother, danced by John Heginbotham in drag, pops pills. As the maid, who’s in drag and on pointe, Kraig Patterson steals every scene he’s in. Morris himself plays Dad, in a loud jacket and a pompadour. In this dysfunctional family, Lauren Grant, a tiny dancer who plays Marie with honesty and dignity, seems like a changeling.
Act I is basically the same story as a traditional Nutcracker — a party and a battle — but Morris’ take is both funny and disturbing. The mice are radio-controlled toys with glowing red eyes; the rats played by dancers feast on the soldiers they kill.
But the snow scene brings magical ingenuity. The bursts of confetti snowflakes thrown from the dancers’ hands are perfectly timed to rival any Busby Berkeley spectacle.
Still, at its kernel, “The Hard Nut” is mean-spirited. Marie kills the Rat King, saves the Nutcracker’s life and passes out from the shock. It takes the Nutcracker, played by Grant’s husband, David Leventhal, several minutes to check if she’s all right. He’s too busy dancing with his Uncle Drosselmeier.
Morris also tries to force the music into E.T.A. Hoffman’s original darker story — and it’s a bad fit. Tchaikovsky’s whimsical dance for Mother Ginger and her children doesn’t tell Hoffmann’s tale of Princess Pirlipat, who gets her face disfigured by a vengeful rat.
Plenty of people love “The Hard Nut.” It’s got great music, great designs, some great dancing — everything but innocence and wonder. This is a Nutcracker for people who don’t believe in Santa Claus, or the Sugarplum Fairy.