Chris Davis' One-Man Nutcracker
Louis Bluver Theatre
302 s. Hicks St.
Philadelphia
Dec. 10, 2024
I should’ve kept track of how many times the words “hard nut” were said during the opening night of comedian Chris Davis’ One-Man Nutcracker.
It would have been an easy statistic to help sum up the star power of dad humor in the five-year-old show that “condenses the two-hour classic into a ballet power hour.”
One-Man Nutcracker is not a concentrated translation of the Tchaikovsky ballet. Rather, the comedic act is a chaotic and, at times, confusing riff on the American consumer experience of the holiday classic.
Watching The Nutcracker is one of those Christmas activities that people with seasonal spirit put on their merry checklists of winter to-do’s. Davis gives us a sped-run, ADHD-laced, dad-joke laden take on the annual event by writing up a middle-aged dude’s perspective on the sugary stage spectacular.
Before briefly posing as a narcissistic conductor tuning up the orchestra, Davis plays the part of a globally famous dancer who loses his right foot during “a gruesome injury with an inflatable swan.” Then he gets one chance at a career comeback: By challenging himself to play every role in The Nutcracker… from memory, with zero preparation.
From there, Davis does a fourth-wall breaking Sparknotes performance that only serves to further confuse us about the famous plot, which I think involves a toy Nutcracker coming to life and defeating an evil Mouse King. Naturally, we get to see Davis play multiple rodents in obscene states: Giving birth to twenty pups in one scene and lying dead on the floor with paws crippled in the air in another. We’re introduced to a few of the main characters through Davis’ portrayals of them, but Davis’ real stunt work involves playing an amalgamation of dorky dad characters — think Steve Carrell, Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell — rolled up into one hairy-chested, tutu-touting turn-outer.
"It's better than CGI! It's shadows!" Davis compliments his own low-budget ballet.
“So, no programs? Do we know anything about this guy?” I overheard an elderly man asking his wife before the show started.
Philly micro legend Chris Davis is known for his solo, or self-described “one man,” routines. Besides the One-Man Nutcracker, he’s also written a “One-Man Apocalypse Now.” And during Philly Fringe Fest last year, he tried out an offshoot of his nutcracker idea through “The 40-Year Old Ballerino,” which was sublimely sold like this: “At 40 years old, Chris Davis seizes on ballet class as a way to replace all other addictions — drugs, alcohol, Modern Family, and the toxic tropes of 90s John Cusack movies.”
The One-Man Nutcracker is not just a smart way for a comic to practice various skills like orchestrally-catalyzed rapid monologuing, lots of slapstick and physical comedy, and well-timed cultural references. It’s also a way for a 42-year-old man evidently taken by the soft dirtbag sensibility of dad humor (remember the Modern Family reference?) to go off the rails.
Davis informally but implicitly casts himself as the reluctant dad-type who goes along with the show in the name of family fun — but is otherwise completely confused by the absurdist nature of the nuclear familial outing. The “dad” fulfills the trope of a character unable to socialize, who copes with the existence he’s subjected himself to through mental escapism. The “dad” identity symbolizes a certain type of male loneliness — one that pairs perfectly with solo comedy.
There’s plenty of debate around the origin and constitution of the “dad joke.” Is it defined by neutral stupidity? A commitment to benign transgressions over snappy offensives? A relentless lack of "cool"? Inexplicable self-indulgence?
The first half hour of Davis’ show is mostly deliberately bad ballet (think extremely shallow squats and sideways spin outs) with some impressions of trippy and cheaply costumed characters from the original story. By the time we get to intermission, Davis is narrating us through the typical patron-of-the-theater endurance struggle: “You have fifteen minutes to get to the bathroom as fast you can … But not if you have kids; then you can just forget about it. You will never make it back in time. It’s The Nutcracker. It doesn’t stop for anyone.”
Davis ventures into political territory without ever going too far. He jokes to the audience about how the Nutcracker makes sense — think candy canes, toys, dancing mice — whereas the real world is baffling: taxes, the electoral college, the results of the 2024 election.
There was the moment where I thought I was gonna get some more true-to-life dad jokes when Davis announced: “Now’s when The Nutcracker gets racist.” But he just launched into a series of fun facts about early and modern stagings of the ballet and how its directors treat race and ethnicity.
And, of course, there are a lot of toilet-level cracks about nuts. Including a reference to the original 1816 novella that inspired the ballet, in which a bunch of kids cry “that was a hard nut!” after trying and failing to break a shell with their own teeth.
The conclusion of the extravaganza is one last attempt to scurry through the supposed emotional bonding portion of the annual experience that we as an audience were supposedly avoiding: “We laughed, we cried, we danced!” Davis synopsizes for his audience. Now, “get a Christmas ornament and I’ll sign it for you,” he instructed. Unlike the Philadelphia Ballet, this was an independent operation with 15 showings and limited time to rake in some bucks.
"Well," I heard a fellow audience member review after the requisite roses had been pelted at Davis' feet. "I don't need to watch The Nutcracker now. That was enough."
One-Man Nutcracker is showing through the end of December. Grab tickets here.
