(A production office. PRODUCER 1 sits at a desk. Enter PRODUCER 2.)
PRODUCER 1: Take a seat. You said you have something Christmassy for me?
PRODUCER 2: Strap in, buddy. This one’s gonna be a doozy.
PRODUCER 1: Ha! Can’t wait.
PRODUCER 2: Okay, so: Curtain up. It’s Christmas Eve. A young girl named Clara is opening gifts. One happens to be from her favorite uncle, a kind of creepy mask-wearing guy named Drosselmeyer.
PRODUCER 1: Don’t love this…
PRODUCER 2: Hear me out: It’s a nutcracker.
(Pause.)
PRODUCER 1: A what?
PRODUCER 2: It’s a thing, you know, I don’t know. It cracks chestnuts.
PRODUCER 1: So Clara loves chestnuts?
PRODUCER 2: She’s never eaten them.
PRODUCER 1: So she hates the Nutcracker?
PRODUCER 2: It’s the most precious thing she’s ever gotten—because it’s also sort of a wooden hipster doll dressed up like a Russian band leader.
PRODUCER 1: … Which she likes?
PRODUCER 2: Loves.
PRODUCER 1: What happens next?
PRODUCER 2: Enter the mice.
PRODUCER 1: Mice?
PRODUCER 2: They’re everywhere!
PRODUCER 1: Who plays the mice?
PRODUCER 2: Little kids who can’t dance at all.
PRODUCER 1: So wait, there’s dancing?
PRODUCER 2: Almost the whole thing is dancing.
PRODUCER 1: But nobody can dance?
PRODUCER 2: Some can, some can’t. Clara can dance. Drosselmeyer’s not bad. You know who’s really good? This random guy visiting from a major company who has no effect on the plot. He’s great. He dances more than anyone.
PRODUCER 1: What happens with the mice?
PRODUCER 2: They have to witness the death of their sovereign.
PRODUCER 1: By who? Clara? Does she crack him like a nut?
PRODUCER 2: No, the Nutcracker does it. He sorta comes to life and fights the Mouse King.
PRODUCER 1: I have to tell ya, pal, this is pretty terrible.
PRODUCER 2: Stay with me. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King dance, and then they dance some more, and then the Nutcracker kills the Mouse King with—
PRODUCER 1: A gun!
PRODUCER 2: No.
PRODUCER 1: A glue trap!
PRODUCER 2: No. Clara’s shoe.
PRODUCER 1: This meeting’s over.
PRODUCER 2: I promise, it’s gonna be a smash!
PRODUCER 1: What happens next?
PRODUCER 2: More dancing.
PRODUCER 1: To go with the plot?
PRODUCER 2: Not at all! After a while, it’s kinda like, wow, this is just a lot of dancing, isn’t it? And a lot by that major-company guy who has no distinct role and seems just to be pulling out everything he knows. Well, it’s probably in his contract.
PRODUCER 1: What happens after the dancing?
PRODUCER 2: More dancing. Then, even more dancing. Then… Oh! The little kids dance again.
PRODUCER 1: But they’re good this time…
PRODUCER 2: No, they’re worse. They basically walk across the stage and wave to their parents. The director has to drag them off.
PRODUCER 1: And this is—
PRODUCER 2: The best part of the show. Half the audience is nodding off at this point; half is checking the program to see how many “numbers” this damn thing has. Everybody in the theater is current on the Jets–Giants score. And then, the pièce de résistance: cultural dances! Spanish, Arabian, Chinese—
PRODUCER 1: Performed by authentic dancers from these cultures, I assume…
PRODUCER 2: No, the Spanish dancers are clearly Irish American. The Chinese boy is Filipino. And don’t even ask about the Arabian.
PRODUCER 1: What’s Clara doing?
PRODUCER 2: Watching from the couch.
PRODUCER 1: She watches until the end?
PRODUCER 2: At some point, she gets up and becomes the Sugar Plum Fairy.
PRODUCER 1: I hate my life.
PRODUCER 2: But wait, guess who shows up?
PRODUCER 1: Santa Claus?!
PRODUCER 2: Drosselmeyer! It was all a dream.
PRODUCER 1: I wish this were a dream.
PRODUCER 2: Trust me, so does the audience.
PRODUCER 1: Let me guess: It ends with more dancing?
PRODUCER 2: Chiefly by the major-company guy. I mean, you have to understand that it’s kind of a big deal for a production of this size to land a dancer of his caliber. And yet there he is, onstage with the kids who can’t tie their shoes. Pretty wild, huh?
PRODUCER 1: Please tell me you dreamed this up in the taxi.
PRODUCER 2: It’s actually based on a novella by E. T. A. Hoffmann called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
PRODUCER 1: Hang on… Is this some kind of Producers thing, where you’re trying to create a flop?
PRODUCER 2: Millions of people pay unreasonable money to see this every December.
PRODUCER 1: But they hate it…
PRODUCER 2: Very much so.
PRODUCER 1: So they never come back…
PRODUCER 2: The average human sees The Nutcracker 161 times in their life.
PRODUCER 1: You’ve seen it 161 times?!
PRODUCER 2: I have nieces and nephews, so I’ve seen it 593 times.
PRODUCER 1: And you’ve hated it—
PRODUCER 2: Every time.
(Pause.)
PRODUCER 1: Okay, we’ll do it.
(They shake hands.)
PRODUCER 1: Got anything for the spring?
PRODUCER 2: How do you feel about anthropomorphic cats?
PRODUCER 1: Not good.
PRODUCER 2: Curtain up on a junkyard. It’s the Jellicle Ball…