You say to yourself fairy tales have no pertinence to real life, your dreams are created of different stuff. You want to believe that life in a fairy world has no appeal, but underneath, the draw is there. Complex decisions easily give way to simplistic adventures. Responsibility wanes before life according to script. The familiarity of The Nutcracker adds to its charm; you know what happens, and you know to what tune it will happen.

Reason disappears in the face of magic. You no longer say, "It can't really be happening this way," you wish it were happening this way to you.

Intermission came and with it, the lights. But the magic lingered. On the other side of the theater, a little girl pranced around under the area created by an arch. She twirled three times, calling to her mother, "Watch me, watch me." Her blond hair flopped as she bounced up in a mock pirouette. She spun again, playing to her now growing audience. She couldn't have been more than four, but she had fallen under the spell.

Throughout the audience, it seemed, little boys and girls were asking their parents for ballet lessons. They wanted tickets to the stage; they wanted to live the dream, be the dream.

The orchestra started again before the lights went down and the crowd immediately fell quiet. The curtain rose on ethereal angels with silver lyres, that looked like K-Mart specials. Then the angels floated off stage (and with them the dry ice that had provided a Vegas air to the scene), and our hero and heroine returned--in a balloon.

The second act of The Nutcracker is when the plot ends, and the dancing begins. Dance becomes dream, a foreign country captured in movement. The prince/nutcracker relays his fight with the mice to his subjects. And then, his candy subjects return one by one to perform for Clara in gratitude for helping to save him.

First coffee--in the form of Spanish dancers, castanets in hand--and then tea--sensuous gymnasts whose physical stunts amaze. Cossack dancers kick and flip over the stage. Chinese dancers come with small attendants who wave long, sinuous orange silk banners. Tutued marzipan with silly caps and then roses, with skirts of petals.

And of course, Mother Ginger with her many toddlers sheltered under the breadth of her skirt. The under-two-feeters ran around the playgroundstage and paused to dance. Clap, turn backs to one another, and bump. Clap and bump.

The final act had always been the most boring, with the best ballet. And so it was tonight. The dancing was terrific, but the scene too adult, with few fairy elements. The little girl behind me agreed. When the male lead came out for his second solo performance, the little girl said quite audibly, "Again?" Her mother replied, "He's going to do some leaps now."

He did, but leaps are not what The Nutcracker is about, and the little girl behind me knew that, as did every other child in the audience. During the last scene, the children in the audience start to drop off to sleep so that when the show is over and they wake up, the performance seems like little more than a dream. That is what The Nutcracker is all about.

When the lights came on, I looked at my watch. I wasn't surprised to see it had stopped five minutes before the show began.