Funny / The Nutcracker

• "The Hard Nut", the campy "retro-modern" take on the ballet (with nods to the novel) by Mark Morris, is mostly Played for Laughs, with its Mouse King tricked out like late-career Elvis Presley, but of note is how the battle between toys and mice breaks out when a toy soldier shoots himself in the foot.
• In one production, Clara and the toy soldiers using a mouse trap to trap the Mouse King so the Nutcracker can finish him off.
• In the American Ballet Theater version, a little mouse appears during the prologue, which starts in the kitchen, terrorizing the maids and cooks preparing for the Christmas party. He reappears at some point during the Land Of Sweets sequence.