When the Uptown Underground abruptly ceased operations earlier this year, Jaq Seifert's annual Yuletide revue, The Buttcracker, found itself searching for a place to pitch its tent—not just any church basement or banquet hall, either, but a campground capable of hosting pyrotechnics, floor acrobatics and exotic acts of nebulous infrastructure. Furthermore, the location of this vaudeville also needed to promise a comfortable environment for audiences entering into the spirit of its gender-fluid body-positive manifesto. Fortunately, the once-desolate district just south of Roosevelt Road is well on its way to becoming one of the city's trendiest neighborhoods, its former automobile showrooms now providing nightlife activities for a youth culture steeped in egalitarian diversity. To be sure, the play (as Shakespeare noted) may still be "the thing," but there's no discounting the advantages of a sophisticated light and sound system, a full-service bar and grill, nearby parking, public transportation and copious pedestrian traffic. The show's improved morale was immediately apparent on its opening night. Based on the 18th-century fairy tale, the story recounts the adventures of meek office manager Clara, whose hired Holiday Party entertainment—a Father Christmas surrogate whose mischievous antics veer a little too far into Tim Curry territory—meets with her workplace supervisor's disapproval. The contrite Kriss Kringle comforts his humiliated sponsor with a nutcracker in the shape of a soldier, whose candy ration transports them both to the Land of Sweets, where Clara's royal reward for bravely helping her GI Joe defeat an army of rats—no helpless damsel, she—is a sumptuous confection-related entertainment, set to jazz arrangements (chiefly those of Duke Ellington, Glen Miller, and Billy Strayhorn) of Tchaikovsky's classic melodies. The emcee trio of Squeaky Bubbles, Fay LaVerte, and Stevie Kinks keep the action progressing at sprightly pace in a spectacle clocking in at a brisk 60 minutes. Returning are belly-dancer Kamrah Raqs, vodka-swilling sequin-scattering Emma Glitterbomb, Gaea Lady ( aka "Hot Chocolate" ) nibbling daintily on flaming torches, and Evelyn "Mother Ginger" Tension, clad in a layer-cake gown and inviting favored spectators to lick frosting from her hand. Newcomers include Claira Bell, a Calavera Catrina slight-of-hand artist fond of smashed crockery, and Pierre LaChance as a Drosselmeyer far younger and more seductive than his traditional geriatric white-ballet counterpart.
