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The production, with Adrienne Lobel’s black and white sets and Martin Pekledinaz’ over the top costuming, continues to entertain and astonish warm, appreciative and chuckling audiences. Its premiere in Brussels January 12, 1991 might well have been a shock, but it has a home in the Bay Area where groups like The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence continue the former Finocchio tradition of cross dressing and female impersonation with broad swaths of parody and imitation. While it’s not Kabuki onnagata style, the verisimilitude is distinctly uncanny, checking cast and company member lists.

I am a sucker for adroit, inventive stage business rendered on time with panache, and Morris pulls few punches in inventiveness. Seeing it first on television truly depressed me: American audiences have come to this? Must we have photojournalism as holiday diversion? Do we have to acknowledge the omnivore nature of the tellie tube and its use as childhood diversion from boredom and parental preoccupation? Morris seems to think so and then some.

Morris’ expose is remarkable; straight, unaffected Marie (Laurent Grant); obstreperous Fritz (June Omura); the too-early sophisticate Louise (Julie Worden); over-reacting Mrs. Stahlbaum (John Higenbotham)(we all know a few);the fatuous Dr. Stahlbaum (Guillermo Resto); and the Housekeeper/Nurse (Kraig Peterson) the perfect foil for the household she handles with incredible mother wit, knees bent, feet in pointe shoes. Craig Blesecker’s Drosselmeyer may be the town’s sharpest dresser - hair, window or sartorial, it matters not, with the one-eye patch,coiffure with its prominent silver streak, a stance suggesting chic posture, vintage Twenties. Without question David Leventhal’s Nutcracker and Prince is the dreamboat answer to Barbie’s royal mate.

The party scene is one of the best choreographed studies of mayhem on the contemporary stage with its guests, their out-of-sight melange of whole-nine-yards behaviors, Mrs. Stahlbaum fluttering like a careening sail boat. Morris’ canny undeviating observations stand him well, though I cringe a bit at the knee rubs undertaken with Rabelaisian gusto, his own curly black wig and rheumy eye sailing onward, but also swiveling to the audience to make sure it’s on the qui vive. His dolls are an absolute hoot of glitzy non-taste.

The transformation scene as the circular black and white wings unfold, enlarged tree and gigantic boxes emerging from the wings is a refreshing take on this crucial element in the story. The mayhem of soldiers in battle fatigue and the mice is a telling study on current warfare and soldiering. We laughed and guffawed; yet the battle fatigues do trigger a certain unease. The soldiers mimic the dead-pan, eyes wide Morris signature look to perfection.

The Snow scene is a choreographic high light, from the sideward moving in demi-plie, the arms in equal flex with the continuous fistful and dribbles of fake snow absolutely synchronized to the musical bursts. There are evident looks of pleasure and glee on the faces of several dancers. I find myself being grateful the dancers are not in toe shoes, wondering how large a supply is consumed each performance, and how easy or not to sweep before Act II. Dan Henry, a former Ice Capades soloist, seeing it exclaimed, “How brilliant, it’s absolutely tightly constructed!”

After the grim little story constructed to edify a feverish Marie with the story of Princess Pirlipat, her disfiguration by mice and her redemption by the young man who could crack the Hard Nut, Marie interrupts Pirlipat’s narcissistic rejection of Drosselmeyer’s nephew; then on with les divertissements. Such diversions - The Spanish with its matador cape wielded like a shawl; the wonderful caftan, turbaned and metallic jingling of the Arabians; perky pheasant-tailed bonnets and fluttering fans for the Chinese; the multi-tiers of gathers, colors and rushing changes of partners in the Russian; the sang-froid French fashionistas to the sounds of the flutes. Finally, there are the floppy red, yellow and green-stemmed flowers who bend, sway, form patterns and roll on their backs to each melodic Waltz of the Flowers lilt.

The grand pas de deux is a clever interpolation of collective participation before Marie and Drosselmeyer’s Nephew get to touch and dance together, still interrupted with lifts by clumps of family and attendant characters. The pas de deux itself is charming, if choreographically rather rudimentary, with the best moves assigned to the Nephew. Morris seems to say “This is a Dance Group, not a ballet company.” Yet Morris manages the same tenderness seen in his full-length Sylvia.

The denouement occurs on the tellie where Marie and the Nephew are seen by Fritz to the distinct envy of Louise. The youngsters are off to bed,as, all supreme, the Maid picks up the miscellany and brings down the curtain – on partial bent knees.

I will never give up on the conventional Nutcracker, but admittedly, Mark Morris’ alternate view is refreshing, acutely observed and mostly plain brilliant.