Twenty-three years after its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mark Morris’s “The Hard Nut” returns to the venue through December 20 as a modern classic. That status was not entirely assured when this cheeky re-imagining of the ballet set to Tchaikovsky’s beloved “The Nutcracker Suite” first electrified audiences. “It’s deepened over the years,” says Morris now. “People who saw it as kids are now bringing their own kids.” The appeal to families notwithstanding, the ballet takes on a decidedly darker tone than the beloved 1912 Marius Petipa version, which has been a holiday staple for years. Basing his version on the work of underground comics-illustrator Charles Burns, Morris transports the ballet from Mittel-Europe to a mid-Twentieth Century suburban setting with tipsy revelers swanning around. That turns even more witty and whimsical in the second act, which brings on the corps in the Waltz of the Flowers and the Waltz of the Snowflakes, a dizzying mix of genders amid showers of confetti. The famous war between the mice and toy soldiers is now a pitched battle between pumped-up G.I. Joes against the Mutant Rat King’s brigades. The Rockettes were never like this.For those who like their mulled holiday fare even spicier — and R-rated — there is the risque “Nutcracker Rouge,” which plays through January 17 at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village. Austin McCormick and the neo-Baroque dance theater Company XIV pull out all the erotic stops with acrobats, opera singers, and scantily dressed, classically trained performers. It marries the ballet with burlesque. When “Nutcracker Rouge” played at the same theater in 2013, Neil Genzlinger in the New York Times wrote, “If the plain old “Nutcracker” causes you to zone out, this one will surely wake you up … The eye-popping production is ‘The Nutcracker’ as it might exist in another decadent dimension. There’s candy, but not the kind you buy at a sweets shop. No gingerbread here either; pasties, not pastries.”More wholesome fare is on display at St. Peter’s Church in midtown where the York Theatre Company hosts “Plaid Tidings” through December 27. In 1989, Stuart Ross put together a handsome foursome of polished singers who spoofed the pop iconography of the 1950s and 1960s in a show called “Forever Plaid.” For this holly-and-ivy version, renditions of pop standards like “Three Coins in a Fountain” yield to such holiday favorites as “Santa Baby” and “Let It Snow.” Given that meteorologists are predicting unseasonably warm temps over the holidays, it may be a little harder for the boys to pull off “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”Another popular musical quartet is known as The Midtown Men, a group made up of original cast members of the long-running Broadway hit “Jersey Boys.” A member of the group Daniel Reichard is reprising his holiday cabaret act “Under the Mistletoe” at Birdland on Sunday, December 20. The young actor, who created the role of Bob Gaudio in “Jersey Boys,” is one of New York’s most accomplished performers who, in this show, brings a singular style to not only the familiar (“Winter Wonderland”) but also to more obscure (“In the Bleak Midwinter”). In the incestuous world that is entertainment, Reichard also created the role of Francis in the 2009 film version of “Forever Plaid, The Movie.”
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