`Nuts & Bolts” is one of the liveliest and probably the most original of all the “Nutcrackers” that come our way each season.
Joel Hall’s sassy, funky, street-smart serenade, subtitled “A Jazzy Nutcracker for the ’90s” and on view through Sunday at the Athenaeum Theatre, is both spoof and revisionist field day, both a Petri dish for high jinks and a celebration of choreographic diversity. It isn’t just a one-dimensional sendup of holiday dance cliches, though that’s part of the fun.
Set to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s marvelous jazz riffs on the Tchaikovsky score, with a host of other pop strains tossed in here and there, the full-length production is a sort of potluck dance smorgasbord. The jitterbug and frug all get nods; so do hip-hop, street struts and out-and-out classical ballet, though the latter’s more often than not hilariously fractured.
In any event, Hall and his Joel Hall Dancers do manage to tease “The Nutcracker” while irreverently throwing it into the ’90s, as promised. Often, the movement is Hall’s inimitable jazz style and playful imagery: Vanessa Truvillion, a recurring figure in gold lame, cloaked in layers of skirts and a shimmering turban, alternates her speedy Caribbean footwork with rolls on the floor and contortions that turn her gaudy costume into a kind of partner.
There is no real storyline, but a kind of surreal vision of a wild, psychedelic street party leading from number to number, creating its own colorful, weird logic. A hand holding a baton inaugurates the proceedings, conducting the Tchaikovsky; it turns out to be that of the brightly colored, unrestrainedly giddy Angel Abcede, as emcee, his long cape underlined with shiny bright blue satin.
Clowns, ballerinas and vaguely Asiatic characters intermix with some truly hallucinogenic entries, including a pair of Gay ’90s saloon girls sporting cotton-candy bouffants as part of the toe-shoe shenanigans in the production’s very funny waltz of the flowers.
Like all good “Nutcrackers,” this one features a children’s corps: a dozen young women and one turban-clad young man in Hall’s wonderfully staged piece called “Arabesque Cookie.”
Abcede, Truvillion, Christina Luzwick, Merrick M. Mitchell, Tracy Hodgkin-Valcy, Aimee Tye and jittery William Gill deserve special mention among the dancers, and costumers Florence Martin and Gregory W. Slawko get credit, too, for everything from a gold-clad creature draped in seaweed-like gauze to a gospel choir whose kelly-green robes end in wispy white hula skirts.
Even the cygnet quartet from “Swan Lake” makes an appearance in the form of four street girls noisily chewing gum.
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“Nuts & Bolts”
When: Through Sunday
Where: Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave.
Phone: 312-902-1500
