Nutbuster: The Ballet!

I haven't been willing to post about this for several days, because I just don't know what to say about it. In the City Pages, there was an advertisement for Nutbuster! The Ballet at the Bryant Lake Bowl. This seemed to be one of those things that would amuse me. After all, the idea that Drosselmeyer is some sort of drunk ruminating on the holidays and having a Nutcrackeresque fantasy - it's all in his mind, not Clara's - is an idea that I feel could be ripe for interesting commentary. Eryn disagreed. She was a bit disgusted with me for thinking that might be fun, although she wanted to know all the details after I went.

But there was no interesting commentary. Rather, after talking Kyle into going with me, we watched a late 40's to early 50's guy dance around the stage for over 30 minutes. Sometimes with a little girl's doll. Sometimes with a bottle of vodka (Kyle and I discussed the similarities to his infamous vodka + knife + phonebook + cement floor incident when we lived at Riverside Plaza. If you look at the picture in that link, we were on the top floor, close to middle, of the building facing you in the photo). Sometimes with a nutcracker. Sometimes with a blow up doll (although he stabbed her at one point and she deflated - I don't remember that scene in The Nutcracker). The only talking was over the pa system at the beginning of the Nutbuster during which John Munger (playing Drosselmeyer) discussed his inspiration for Nutbuster, which evolved out of a lonely Christmas where he wrapped himself three presents, hung out with his cat, and then went to see Dune at the local theater. Given that Dune was released in 1984, I'm going to up my guess of his age to mid-50's.

To capture the feeling of this one man play, I'd have to go with, you know when you see something that's so sad, it becomes funny? And then it becomes sad again? And then you have a moment of disbelief that you're still sitting there watching it, so it becomes sad for you, then sad for them again, and then the whole thing is funny because it's all so sad. But not really in a good way. That feeling. Sort of A Clockwork Orange with your eyes toothpicked open feeling, but more melancholy before the uncontrollable laughter sets in.

On a positive note, the beer and my dinner, three cheese tortellini with shrimp and lots of vegetables, were very good. I had enough Surly Furious to smooth over the strangeness of almost anything, and a good Anchor Porter thrown in the midst of some post-ballet drinking with Kyle made it all worthwhile.