Hanging Cow Productions!

This play/psuedo musical has delighted and entertained New York’s Off Broadway audiences for 4 seasons… “The ButtCracker” is set in the modern day, spoofing not only the story of the Nutcracker ballet but also all of the popular dance/movies/television shows spanning the last few decades.  “Cocoa,” receives an ‘accidental’ Christmas gift of black ballet slippers, a gift from her middle class father who “thought them we’re bowlin’ shoes,” but when she slips them on she finds them magical! After attempting a few clumsy pirouettes in her bedroom while dancing with her nutcracker doll, she slams herself in the head with it, knocking herself out, prompting the comedic and transformational dream-like journey which becomes the rest of the play. She awakens at a “Prawn Lake” audition, where she meets the “fantastical” versions of people she knows in her real life, only this time in a twisted world of dance, dreams, pop culture, and a Manhattan/Brooklyn borough war which involves a “no dance” ordinance (due to “disco and rock and roll induced accidents and deaths off the Brooklyn Bridge”) Juxtaposing the themes of Footloose, Dirty Dancing, Fame, Flashdance, and many others, the plot creates the antics of “Crashdance,” “Prancing with the Stars,” “Cutloose,” “Lord of the Pants,” and “Saturday Night Beaver,” in a hilarious journey including men in tights and Tutu’s, dueling ballerinas, and disco fever gone awry. This psuedo-musical, in the end, leaves you wondering, WAS it just a dream or did something “funny” happen on the way to the ballet?