Daily News from New York, New York • 46

46 DAILY NEWS Wednesday December 9, 1992 EXTRA ENTERTAINMENT no nn main S9 V1 Choreographer brings 'Nutcracker' into the 1960s T0 60 J0 -A fights for her love, and wins. She gets her Nutcracker, by then transformed into a handsome and marriageable young man, and in a culminating dance that is both funny and touching, the whole cast rats, snowflakes, Barbie, everyone comes out to celebrate. Morris has a double reputation as the dance world's brashest young rock 'n' roller and as one of the most idealistic old-fashioned humanists. "The Hard Nut" confirms both sides of the story. While tomorrow's show will be the ballet's U.S.

premiere, it had its world premiere last year in Belgium, and WNET taped it there, at the Royal Opera House in Brussels. The resulting program will be aired Dec. 16 at 8:30 p.m. on Ch. 13.

BT'S 90 MINUTES LONG, and it has Morris himself, in the lobby of the theater, telling you the story of "The Nutcracker" and what it means to him. He also appears among the party guests in Act I. He's the one who comes back from the bathroom with a piece of toilet paper trailing from his shoe. (Acocella writes frequently on dance.) Baby strip. And the ballet looks like a comic book: bold, bright and flat, with lots of things that go "Pow!" and "Blam!" Burns has also updated the ballet to the '60s.

In the Act I party scene, those people doing the bump wear bell bottoms and Elvis hairdos, and when kind old Drosselmeier, a family friend, arrives at the party, the toys he brings the children are a robot and platinum-haired Barbie, both life-sized. Everything PREVIEW is delicious-ly brazen and charmless. The robot tears Barbie's arm off. In the battle of the mice and the toy soldiers, we get big hairy rats instead of mice, and the soldiers are G.I. Joes, one of whom shoots his own foot.

Despite all this pop and hilarity, however, the meanings of "The Hard Nut" are exactly the same as those of the original wonder, terror, love, miracles. The ballet's heroine, Marie played by a grown-up dancer, Clarice Marshall, but uncannily childlike is a completely serious conception, an innocent but stout-hearted little girl who falls in love, By JOAN ACOCELLA DN A REHEARSAL STU-dio on lower Broadway, the members of the Mark Morris Dance Group have spent the last two weeks practicing beating each other up, passing out, making out and doing the bump, the stroll and the hokey-pokey, all in preparation for Morris' new version of "The Nutcracker" it's called "The Hard Nut" which will have a two-week season beginning Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, with the Brooklyn Philharmonic playing Tchaikovsky's great score. Updated "Nutcrackers" are reasonably common, and their emphasis is usually psychological. They retain the Victorian-parlor setting of the original "Nutcracker" of 1892, but then they go on to reveal what they see as the dark forces incest, family discord, whatever that lie beneath that cozy surface. Morris' "Hard Nut" is both more revisionist and more traditional than these other new-style "Nutcrackers." He has had the ballet reconcep-tualized by the underground comics artist Charles Burns, famous for his syndicated Big -I POP BALLET: Keith Sabado (I.) and Rob Besserer in "The Hard Nut" RITZ FROM COVER TJiiddah' is fun, tiutToyvey, it's too long By HOWARD KISSEL 75v -sKkri (LT Daily News Drama Critic HELLO MUDDAH, HELLO FADDUH! Based on the songs of Allan Sherman.

Conceived and written by Douglas Bernstein and Rob Krausz. With Stephen Berger, Tovah Feldshuh, Jason Graae, Paul Kreppel and Mary Testa. Sets by Michael E. Downs. Costumes by Susan Branch.

Directed by Michael Leeds. At Circle in the Square Downtown. FOR A FEW YEARS, IN THE late '50s and early '60s, the record album was a prime source of comedy, introducing such talents as Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Bob Newhart and Shelley Berman. Among the funniest figures in this vinyl Renaissance was Allan Sherman, who wrote song paro where you can start to make some money. But in 10 years, only a handful of acts did that Guns N' Roses, Jane's Addiction.

The way radio is now, promoting songs instead of artists, it's difficult The business isn't creating careers." Delsener agreed yesterday that "making money in clubs is tough," but said he's "ecstatic" with the results of his aggressive booking approach. "I think Scher's getting out because he can't make as much money here as from other things." Scher acknowledges that his other work is a factor. He's also a partner with Jim Koplik in Metropolitan Entertainment, which will continue to promote local shows, and president of Polygram Diversified Entertainment "The Ritz is extremely viable," Scher says. "It's a great facility. But it needs corporate functions, fashion shows, things like that I didn't have the time for it" Durkasz says The Ritz hopes to attract more private functions with its new side room, which "will have an atmosphere like a '30s Harlem supper club," with tables and seating for as many as 250.

Durkasz, who until recently booked Wetlands, hopes The Ritz will get more shows from other promoters although Delsener says he isn't interested. Durkasz also is looking at artists who would draw a sit-down crowd, "like Suzanne Vega or Leonard Cohen." He would do rap, he says, and "we want to keep ticket prices low." Cat also plans to reopen the old Cat Club on E. 13th St. as The Grand. dies," substituting ggg REVIEW Jewish names, words and turns of phrase NOSTALGIA TIME: (from Tovah Feldshuh, Stephen Berger and Mary Testa in "Hello" for familiar non-Jewish lyrics, like a fabric salesman who is "tramping through the warehouse where the drapes of Roth are stored." In Act Two, there are three songs Sherman (and Albert Hague) wrote for a 1969 flop called "The Fig Leaves Are Falling." Whatever their shortcomings 23 years ago, they seem wonderful today.

The fact that they are real theater songs, not just sketch material, shows up the thinness of the rest of the show. "We'll take you to barbecues and brisses That's the kind of musical that this is," runs an introductory song, presumably by the show's creators, Douglas Bernstein and Rob Krausz. They have tied Sherman's songs together by a plot following a man from birth through suburbia to old age in Miami. As the focal figure, Jason Graae does a host of silly things with unfailing grace. Mary Testa is effortlessly hilarious throughout Stephen Berger, Tovah Feldshuh and Paul Kreppel skillfully mine the often tired material for solid laughs.

As theater, it's slight, but as nostalgia, it's, good fun. parody of "Christmas in Killarney," using the Irish jig to set a series of Jewish introductions: "Shake hands with your Uncle Max, my boy In those days, records rarely exceeded 20 minutes of material per side, and if "Hello Muddah, Hello a revue based on Sherman's work, ran roughly 40 minutes, it might have been as enjoyable as the records. Essentially, however, these songs hinge on one joke the juxtaposition of Jewish and goyish, which begins to pall after a while, no matter how clever the word play and sometimes it is dazzling, as in a lyric about a heroic "T1 1 a a i.