'Hard Nut,' Mark Morris, review: a crackup

There are days when you just need something to cheer you up, especially during a holiday season darkened by ineffable tragedy. If the drollery of Mark Morris' "The Hard Nut" - which returned to Cal Performances this weekend with shows that run through Dec. 23 - is insouciant entertainment that surely doesn't profess to change the world, it's also a gleeful romp with the power to make you laugh in moments when laughter is hard to come by.

In an essay titled "Why Comedy is Truer to Life Than Tragedy" this year, Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout observed, "In most human lives, absurdity and sorrow are woven together too tightly to be teased apart." I couldn't help but think of those words and consider the vital necessity for the sort of tension-relieving exhale that "The Hard Nut" provides as the lights went down at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall on Friday night. We need comedy, if only to help us cope with the cosmic absurdity that is human frailty.

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