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.