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I wrote about the production at great length a year ago so will truncate my observations. The audience is drawn into the setting with the slides of San Francisco, circa 1915 and images of young children in costumes of the era, carried throughout Act I save for the flamboyance of Drosselmeyer and his swirling cape, minus the nephew. With Clara (Caroline Hearst) near adolescence the dream of a prince is consistently abetted by Drosselmeyer’s presence throughout the ballet, sharing the seat of honor in Act II which adroitly unharnessed from the prancing like human ponies; it gets moved around the stage from number to number. Wheater gives this man with mysterious powers considerable dash and theatricality.

Ricardo Bustamonte and Pascale Leroy are a handsome set of parents; Anita Paciotti and Jim Sohm essay robust grandparents, willing though diminished in range of motion. The stage business of both couples is detailed, both generations quite believable. It is interesting that the school now has sufficient boys so girls masquerade only as soldiers in the fight scene.

Jaime Garcia Castilla’s Jack-in-the-Box repeated its astonishment; how can anyone be so limber; from splits to kicks to back bends, he is spectacular. No less fetching with a differing emphasis is Clara Blanco’s doll, her tresses in Shirley Temple curls, petite figure like a porcelain statuette tilted occasionally. The Nutcracker, which Drosselmeyer places in the box, emerges, a life-sized achtung-stepping, multiple pirouette figure, shrinks back into doll size so that Clara can clasp the grotesquely-grinning figure in her arms. Again, the nephew is missing.

It may be new or old business; pre Nutcracker, Clara receives a hexagonal, mirrored container with a ballerina figure in it when the gifts are first handed out. Clue: watch for it full-sized!

The mice do not scurry until the tree and surroundings are transformed, but the figures still whirl across the floor in semi-darkness. The transformed scene with the breakfront as landing gear, the Nutcracker now life size and the fire grate enough to warm the entire body is still great. A rakishly vain Mouse King (Kyril Vassilkovsky), emerges from the orchestra pit and retires there, vanquished by the mouse trap directed by Clara into the crucial position, the device a clear note of encroaching modernity.

The main casting onwards is almost identically with the production’s premiere. Yuan Yuan Tan and Ruben Martin the regal snow couple, Tan’s snowflake skirt glistens as remembered. I still miss the swirling sweep of Lew Christensen’s Snow Scene choreography; while Tomasson’s spiky assignments are handsomely executed, the gusts and winds of winter are replaced by icicles following the storm. Martin gets more dancing than the King in the Christensen version; more and better male partners dance these days. The curtain plunged to the stage obliterating Tan’s final, supported pose.

With Act II the creatures of the garden - butterflies, lady bugs and dragonflies were evident and Muriel Maffre, repeating her role as the Sugar Plum Fairy, tripped regally among them. When Maffre and the flowers were on stage the scrim became dreamy with subdued pink, peach to mauve flowers, a backdrop not remembered, but evoking Golden Gate Park’s Conservatory of Flowers.

The principal variations in Act II possessed nearly the same cast as 2004, save switching Chinese Tea from Pascal Molat to Nicholas Blanc, Molat becoming the center of the Russian trio. Tomasson has retained Anatole Vilzak’s choreography for this variation, the men bursting forth from three enormous Faberge eggs, lively and elemental. Tomasson’s Tea also has the benefit of a glossy, multi-parted dragon, quite politically correct. In the Arabian, Van Patten once again is the Nordic houri from a Aladdin-shaped lamp.

Instead of fluffy petals' floating exuberant renverses, Tomasson’s Waltz of the Flowers'carefully-spaced flower bed has yet to naturalize’ in a profusion of blooms. The Sugar Plum Fairy moves amongst them with a slightly frosty assignment, her jetes and attitude tours to the right, to the left with entrances and exits before a repetition, seems to suggest “Let’s quicken the bloom time!” From the left orchestra aisle Maffre seems to travel excessively from the wings before her dance phrases could begin.

Here comes the hexagonal kiosk, full-sized, as Ms. Sugar-Plum places the tiara on Clara’s head. She steps into the kiosk, the attendants turn it and out steps Tina le Blanc, to accept the courtly hand of Gonzalo Garcia who has never danced better, more precisely, with greater attentiveness to his partner. Whether it is mime or elevation, he scintillates in the classical vocabulary. Le Blanc matches him with each champagne bubble of her spirit, whether in a line of chaine tours, or in a gravity defying trust she displays in her brief run and a turning leap to land on Garcia’s shoulder. Tomasson has pulled out every choreographic device designed to slack the jaw in wonder.

The wrap up proceeds with dispatch, the good byes occur,the original domestic scenery moves soundlessly back into place with young Clara on the couch, waking to a grey San Francisco Christmas, greeting her mother on the handsome curving staircase upstage left. Yanni Varda, one time dancer with Ballet Internationale in Indianapolis remarked, “Clara should not have her back to the audience when the curtain falls,” an apt observation, the minor blip in this second season celebrating San Francisco’s particular Caisse Noisette.