“Ma-gic, ma-gic, ma-gic!” A small but cheerful audience chants together in the cozy Proscenium Theatre at The Drake the morning after the first snow of the holiday season. Writer, creator, and performer of The One-Man Nutcracker, Chris Davis, lets us know under no uncertain terms that we are part of the show. Now in his forties, the fledgling ballerino wears a floaty house dress and tells us that he started his ballet training just six years ago under the tutelage of Amy Novinski (to whom he gives many nods throughout the evening).
Davis’ first stage language is theatre, and his original rendition of One-Man Nutcracker premiered at Philadelphia’s historic Plays and Players Theatre on Delancey Street the same year he started his dance training. Clever shadow puppetry has been carried through from the original with the king-sized bedsheet graduating to a large white scrim, but the show itself changes “one year at a time.” This year’s choreographer, Campbell Tosney, helps Davis’ would-be “tours like butter” and high-instepped feet come closer to par with his acting and physical comedy chops. Audience members hold their breath as he pulls off an urgently delivered monologue told in time with the music, usually accompanied by a Russian trepak-style dance.
The conductor (Davis doubles as the faux-leader of the evening’s imagined orchestra) enters in white ballet tights under black tails and is met by exuberant pre-recorded applause. Moments later, Davis is a has-been world famous dancer, rendered with two left feet after a tragic accident with an inflatable swan. When faced with a red and a blue envelope, he emerges from his alcohol-riddled depression and chooses the one which returns him to the stage, answering a summons from his ballet teacher who has made a dance which only he can perform. In a section of this exclusive number, Lady Gaga sings Drosselmeyer’s theme and the worlds of silent film and mime merge with sports references and a Burger King crown.
Shouts of “MVP, MVP!” swell and then fade as Marie (also Davis) rescues her beloved Nutcracker prince during the battle scene. Davis takes a seat on an actor’s stool: “Now the Nutcracker gets racist.” With healthy doses of real-life citations and a bit of sad humor, he takes us through a series of spot-on observations and historical notes highlighting the many ways the classic ballet set to Tchaikovsky’s epic score has played into antiquated, tacky, and downright insulting racial stereotypes.
In 1993, “Macaulay Culkin did exactly this:” Davis physically quotes the then-young star’s princely mime of the battle scene, adding plenty of his own flair. The audience delights in historical tidbits about the Nutcracker and a recap of E.T.A. Hoffman’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, in which the quest for the Krakatuk takes 13 years and leaves the boy who finally cracks it transformed into a hideous nutcracker. Timing is everything, and Davis’ movement from one idea to the next elicits joy.
“Impossible things are possible.” “Up here, the world makes sense.” “Theatre is a participatory event.” Davis spouts such aphorisms during his brilliantly entertaining hour-long romp. I grin from ear to ear as he likens his character’s dream of being the cavalier (lead male dancer in the Nutcracker) to his own personal mission of being “the best Advanced Beginner ballet dancer” he can be to the sounds of Eye of the Tiger. When he muses over the logic (if there ever was any) of Mother Ginger’s drag-on-stilts birth-like reveal of tiny dancing children who emerge from under her skirt and return as if to her womb as she waves goodbye, I laugh so hard I cry. “Like a wonderful dream,” Davis makes us wonder whether the stage and live performance might really be “the last place that magic exists.” Ballet lovers and haters alike will find joy this holiday season in One-Man Nutcracker, even if the lovable “one-man” asks you to return the Wawa gift cards he doles out during the show so he can reuse them in the next performance.
