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A CurtainUp New Jersey Review
The Nutcracker and I
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This is a bankrupt Christmas An Off-key Chrismas I don’t hear Angels On high in the sky — Celeste |
Peter Scolari as Professor Hoffmann and Annie
Golden as the Sugar Rush Fairy
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It isn’t because the length of Allesandrini’s name takes up so much space in the credits, but rather because he is renowned as the award-winning writer and director of all fifteen acclaimed editions of theatrical spoofs Forbidden Broadway. In collaboration with book writer Peter Brash, and even more audaciously with the late composer Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky whose music has been employed/enjoined, Allesandrini has contributed a plethora of hilarious lyrics. That they alone are able to keep a smile on your face even when you may be inclined to wince at the book is no small achievement.
As expected, great liberties have been taken with the story as we more familiarly know it. A rather lame if not totally misguided attempt has been made by Brash to keep the romantic aspect of the original story, but give it a sense of modernity. In this version, Celeste (Clara in the ballet) is a teenager who lives with her mother, father, and younger brother in Pawchusett, an economically depressed New England mill town. An accident occurs while Celeste is rehearsing for the annual production of the Nutcracker Ballet. This leaves her with a broken foot and a head responding to an overdose of prescription and health pills given to her by the ditsy doctor and crass parents. . .thus the opportunity for a whopper of a dream.
Considering the crude, muscle-bound, stuck-on-himself, dim-witted Olympic snowboarder her bankrupt parents present to her as a present and want her to date, it is no wonder that Celeste dreams of her ideal. He, of course, is her Christmas gift, the handsome Nutcracker Prince who with a toss of his “magic nuts” whisks them off on a New York adventure in a snow globe where he not only rescues her from Zack’s pernicious assaults but also from a range of a New York types, expressly deigned to be politically incorrect. This sets the stage for the best part of the show: a multi-cultural medley that includes the lyrical ranting of a Bodega Owner, a Hindu cabbie, a pizza delivery boy, three Russian and one Jewish Chinese Chef.
Unfortunately, Brash’s book, somewhat reminiscent of Dorothy’s adventures in Oz, is only fitfully accommodating to the possibilities and hardly in the same league with Allesandrini’s often gleefully giddy lyrics. That we can throw accolades at Tchaikovsky’s delightful melodies goes without saying. Brash has made a tactical error by not making the young lovers as blissfully over-the-top as the other characters, and they remain attractive but steadfastly uninteresting throughout this otherwise deliriously engineered romp.
It is to their credit that Haley Carlucci who plays Celeste (Clara in the ballet) and A.J. Shively, who plays the Nutcracker Prince, survive the onslaught of madcap mayhem in which they are catapulted. The lovely and talented Carlucci, who was Maria in the Broadway revival of West Side Story, sings beautifully (when her voice isn’t made extra shrill by electronic enhancement) and dances well (given the few steps allotted her by choreographer Joseph Simeone). I would like to say that Shively, who made his Broadway debut as Jean-Michel in the revival of La Cage Aux Folles, is more than wooden, but let’s say that he cracks nuts (“Do you know how difficult it is to crack a beechnut?”) with aplomb.
Amidst the shtick and the satire, Celeste and the Nutcracker Prince mainly appear as distracting intruders among a company of expert farceurs who, when given the opportunity and mostly in the second act, provide this musical with its funniest moments. Most often, the stage belongs to Peter Scolari, who as the bespectacled Professor Hoffman, a flustered toy policeman, a loony George Ballanchine, and even en travestie in a ball gown, proves to be a fearlessly intrepid performer.
Theatrical trouper Annie Golden is his match in deploying her instinct for insinuating more than the role offers. In the duel roles of Clara’s crass mother and as the more endearingly caricatured Sugar Rush Fairy/Zack’s mischievous accomplice, Golden, leaves no doubt with her zany performance that she is suffering from the effects of a sugar rush. Without having to answer the call of being sur les points, she is a flat-footed hoot in her candy-decorated tutu and pink cotton candy hair.
David Murin’s whimsical costume designs are a plus. Each member of the supporting cast, including Nick Dalton, as Zack, Edward Staudenmayer, as a Russian waiter and Tchaikovsky, and Aidan Benevides, as Celeste’s brother and a Pizza boy, add their own brand of zaniness into the antics that director David Saint has firmly wedged into James Youman’s bright, eye-candy settings. As it is now, the book needs a new direction and Celeste and The Nutcracker Prince are in desperate need of a more humor-driven course of romantic activity. Lyrics are important but should not be the main support for a musical. Right now they are the primary source of our pleasure. Despite its occasional treats, The Nutcracker and I needs a more amusing book if it wants to qualify as a traditional holiday entertainment.
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The Nutcracker and I Conceived and written by Gerard Alessandrini and Peter Brash Directed by David Saint Cast: Peter Scolari (Professor Hoffmann, toy Policeman, Hindu Cabbie, Firebird Waiter, George Ballanchine, Dr. Stahlbaum) Haley Carlucci (Celeste Snowden) A.J. Shively (Eliot/Nutcracker) Nick Dalton (Zack Whitefield) Annie Golden (Mother, Alex, Sugar Rush Fairy, Chinese Chef) Edward Staudenmayer (Veselka Waiter, Tchaikovsky) Aiden Benavides (Peter Snowden, Pizza Boy) Set Design: James Youmans Costume Design: David Murin Lighting Design: Joe Saint Sound Design: Dan Moses Schreier Projection Design: Steve Channon Music Direction and Arrangements: David Caldwell Choreography: Joseph Simeone Running Time: 2 hours including intermission George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, N.J. (732) 246 – 7717 Tickets $40.00 - $70.00 Performances: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays, 2 p.m. Saturdays, Sundays and some Thursdays. From: 11/29/11 Opening: 12/02/11 Closing: 12/31/11 Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 12/02/11 |
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Musical Numbers
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Act One
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Act Two
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