Chris Davis presents One-Man Nutcracker 2024

We first see Davis in a maestro’s tail coat over white tights and tee shirt, his back to us as he leads an imaginary orchestra in the overture playing on the sound system. But he soon discards the coat for a Matryoshka doll of nested story-telling, performed sometimes in front of a white screen and sometimes as a shadow-play behind it. We move between two worlds, one in which he is a man of no apparent athletic prowess in his 40s and the other in which his shadow-self, a great ballerino, has fallen on ridiculously silly hard times.

He’s been asked to dance the cavalier, he says, in spite of his recent injury, and proceeds to whip through the first act children’s dances, marching with an imaginary toy rifle and riding a nonexistent toy horse. Behind the screen, he plays a shadow mouse-king. Campbell Tosney’s choreography gives us just a few recognizable steps for each dance, like sketches for an oil painting, made absurd by the overgrown, not-quite-skillful, dancer.

Given the roses at the door, I expected some audience participation, and I was not disappointed. Davis waves, and encourages applause throughout, and draws on audience members for the Grandfather Dance. He skulks across the stage as Drosselmeyer, with a black top hat and cape, and leads us in a chant—magic! magic!—like an audience demanding the headliner at a rock show. No Bruce Springsteen appears, but our enthusiasm does earn us a shadow puppet rabbit pulled from the shadow of his hat.

Over the course of the performance, he breaks character to comment on the skeezy uncle’s interest in his young niece and to deconstruct the colonialism in the national dances. Throughout he weaves the meta-story of his own dance lessons this year, working on his pirouettes. (It took me about five years to do the basic Tai Chi forms well, so I related to his struggle, and cheer on his next four years!)

It was opening night, so not all of the jokes made a solid landing, but I’m not sure they were supposed to. Whatever was happening on the stage, the unseen narrator (Severin Blake) let us know everything was all right. Their voice felt like a soft blanket and warm cocoa on a winter’s night, and I could have listened to them forever. But after one hour, Davis took his final bow and the audience tossed those long-stem roses, a proper bravo.