By Talia Carl­isle

The wait is over. WITCH Music Theatre is back in town, bring­ing the candy­floss-sweet hearted magic of Amélie, our new friend at The Han­nah (Han­nah Play­house) till Nov 29.

Have you ever opened your favour­ite child­hood story book or movie and wanted to dive right in? Now is your chance to dive into Amélie’s world, which has cap­tured the world’s child-like curi­os­ity since the French motion pic­ture came out in 2001, writ­ten by Guil­laume Laur­ant, and Jean-Pierre Jeun­et who also dir­ec­ted.

Amélie The Music­al is a hop, skip and a song back to the excite­ment of child­hood, where we meet sweet Amélie (Rachel McSweeney) – a curi­ous, spir­ited 6‑year-old with dreams of adven­tures, and earn­ing the love of her par­ents (Craig Beardsworth and Gemma Hoskins).

Craig Lucas’s book, and lyr­ics by Nath­an Tysen and Daniel Messé (who also wrote the music) lead us through Amélie’s life and adven­tures, quickly gain­ing love from our full house on open­ing night, with cheers, laughter and applause at the start of each act, not just at the end.

Our tick­ets wel­come us into Amélie’s world in enchant­ing Par­is, where music­al dir­ect­or Hay­den Taylor’s band bring Parisi­an street life to Wel­ling­ton, intro­du­cing new friends and char­ac­ters who sup­port Amélie’s quests along­side find­ing a prop­er edu­ca­tion, a job, and Elton John (Wil­li­am Duig­nan) who we adore.

And love? Of course! We all need more love in this world, and this show fills our hearts in every way from the story, music, cos­tumes, set and even pup­pet­eer­ing (James Fish­er)  just to really pull on our heartstrings.

I really fall in love with every cos­tume by Polly Crone and Dorothe Olsen,which brings out each char­ac­ter, plus the set by Ben Tuck­er-Emer­son.

The mov­ing lights by Alex “Fish” Fish­er are a char­ac­ter them­selves that bring this Broad­way show to life for us, for a lim­ited time only. The same can be said for the props which would need a team like Court­ney Ilton, Scott Max­im, Nick Lerew, Ben and Joshua Tuck­er-Emer­son to stop them run­ning away and help us to fol­low the story, mys­ter­i­ously and beau­ti­fully mys­ti­fy­ing us by the “Mys­ter­i­ous Man” Kev­in Orlando.

Being back at Han­nah play­house feels like com­ing home after its reopen­ing, sur­roun­ded by Wellington’s best tal­ent in the audi­ence and onstage – who love this show and pour their souls into it as WITCH always do, led by such geni­us of our co-dir­ect­ors Maya Nanda-Huff and Nick Lerew who bring a sparkle to everything they touch and every­one in their path.

Amélie takes us fur­ther than the world of Par­is, to the ulti­mate escape and joy of child­hood where any­thing is pos­sible, and you should do everything pos­sible not to miss this.

Don’t wait for Christ­mas, fill the stock­ings and your heart now with this time­less tale before your time runs out.