The Nutcracker’s always been one of ‘the bal­lets’ I’ve heard about but nev­er seen.

Learn­ing about it via read­ing the The Baby-Sit­ters Club books as a kid and grow­ing up dan­cing myself, I’ve always wanted to get the chance to exper­i­ence it, and finally, thanks to this year’s Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let Kiwi twist on a fest­iv­al clas­sic, I finally got my chance.

RNZB shows are always a spec­tacle, and this one is no excep­tion. A giant matte paint­ing pro­jec­tion of a clas­sic sum­mer beach land­scape greets us as we enter the St James, and the top of the show sets this entire pro­jec­tion in motion; the waves crash­ing across a dis­tant shore, flowers mov­ing in the breeze, a styl­ised Buzzy Bee-esque hum­ming­bird-plane flut­ter­ing about in the foliage.

There can be chal­lenge in adapt­a­tion; some attempts to take over­seas works and present them in a ‘Kiwi’ fash­ion can come off as cloy­ing or insin­cere, but we open out into an Aotearoa bach in a 1950s-style sum­mer and it feels like com­ing home.

A giant pōhu­takawa tree hangs over­head, and dan­cers emerge from the water at the back of the stage, car­ry­ing snorkels and surf­boards. Clara Stahl­baum (Catar­ina Estévez Collins) and her fam­ily and friends are on hol­i­day, about to cel­eb­rate Christ­mas in the most Kiwi of ways. Tchaikovsky’s score (per­formed by the New Zea­l­and Sym­phony Orches­tra) is icon­ic; you’ve almost cer­tainly heard some of these num­bers before, and the flut­ter­ing viol­ins set the scene for a per­fect summer’s day.

Clara and her fam­ily and friends dance joy­fully in the sun; couples paired togeth­er in sim­il­ar out­fits, but Clara stand­ing out in bright red among them. Clara’s god­moth­er, Auntie Dros­sel­mey­er (Ana Gal­lardo Lob­aina), returned from over­seas, is resplen­dent in shim­mer­ing purple and bestows gifts upon the fam­ily, includ­ing the wooden nutcrack­er sol­dier him­self to Clara.

A dis­tinct and wel­com­ing inter­weav­ing of Mātaur­anga Māori gifts us with Koro (Tai­aroa Roy­al), Clara’s grand­fath­er, who I adore watch­ing; aside from ground­ing us a little more in the Aotearoa of this world with wiri and a hongi, the char­ac­ter just reminds me very fondly of the many koro I know from grow­ing up in Gis­borne.

Inter­weav­ing indi­geneity, the Aotearoa land­scape and fur­ther Kiwi nos­tal­gia of our world helps decent­ral­ise the bits of this bal­let that haven’t aged so well. This becomes espe­cially appar­ent when it comes to the series of culin­ary tableaus later in the piece.

In a moment of deep the­at­ric­al magic, pōhu­takawa rise up and up above the stage, and we sink down below it, to the roots of the ancient tree where mys­ter­i­ous creatures lurk. The Mouse King (Calum Gray) and his army of ver­min leap onto stage with great quad­robic phys­ic­al­ity. This ant­ag­on­ist and his friends tend to have region­al-spe­cif­ic vari­ations – in New York they tend to use rats, would you believe – but here in Aotearoa the Mouse King’s crew is an army of grey-and-white-furred weasels, stoats and pos­sums.

The creatures encroach upon Clara, but at last! – the tit­u­lar Nutcrack­er (Zachar­ie Dun) leaps to her aid, strid­ing onto stage with his army of sol­diers, and an epic sword battle (fight choreo by Nick Shultz) begins. I won’t spoil the demise of the Mouse King, but it too has the same Kiwiana flair.

Ushered away from the beach into Auntie Drosselmeyer’s plane – the same Buzzy Bee-esque one from the open­ing pro­jec­tion – we fly across Aotearoa and down to the South­ern Alps, where a chor­us of snow­flakes and their Storm Mas­ter (Branden Rein­ers), flit and leap impress­ively across the stage in clouds and clouds of shim­mer­ing snow.

A kid behind me whis­pers to her mum, in awe, “Is that real snow?” which I guess is what this is all about, isn’t it – and so con­cludes Act One.

Act Two finds us in the mag­ni­fi­cent Land of Sweets, where the Sug­ar Plum Fairy (Jemima Scott) and the Nutcrack­er-turned-Prince show Clara and Auntie Dros­sel­mey­er a stun­ning tableau of sweet treats.

This part of the bal­let when done tra­di­tion­ally is quite con­tro­ver­sial – it fea­tures deeply ste­reo­typed roles such as “Ara­bi­an” and “Chinese” dan­cers – but once more, the power of adapt­a­tion has abso­lutely improved upon this clas­si­cism, as these roles are reima­gined as Kiwiana treats; a smor­gas­board of hokey pokey ice-creams, a group of lolly cakes, two chocol­ate fish and a trio of pavlovas with dan­cing inspired by Anna Pavlova her­self.

With a col­lec­tion of flowers, led by the mighty pōhu­takawa (Kirby Selchow), bring­ing a cel­eb­rat­ory flor­al flair to the rest of the Act, Clara flies home, awaken­ing in the morn­ing sur­roun­ded by her friends and fam­ily.

The Nutcrack­er is visu­ally spec­tac­u­lar, and at its heart, incred­ibly charm­ing. Ty King-Wall’s cho­reo­graphy acts as both a ref­er­ence to the past his­tory of the show and a yearn­ing towards a joy­ful and magic­al Aotearoa, with a dose of the sac­char­ine; a true treat for the audi­ence this fest­ive sea­son.

I would per­haps ques­tion some of the sight­lines, pla­cing some moments to the extreme far left of the stage does mean that those sit­ting around me are scratch­ing to catch at least one key point in the nar­rat­ive, but out­side of that foible, the show settles itself very charm­ingly in as one of the RNZB’s best.