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.