The original toy story – The Nutcracker, set in a Christmas wonderland with sugar plum fairies and toy soldiers – is being given a new lease of life by The Australian Ballet.

Sir Peter Wright’s version of the 1892 ballet was first performed by Birmingham Royal Ballet in 1990. In 2007, The Australian Ballet first performed this production of The Nutcracker, despite having an Australian version which was performed by the company in 1992.

“The [other] production is not really for children,’’ The Australian Ballet’s artistic director David McAllister says. ‘‘The original is magical and it has all those elements that kids love – the snow goose, the sugar plum fairy and snowflakes. The traditional bits and pieces are all there and this production is a very magical version of it.”

Designer John F Macfarlane, who created the costumes and sets for the Birmingham production, travelled to Australia three years ago to help prepare the sets and costumes.

Fabrics – including some sourced from the UK and Europe – and sets had to be hand-dyed or hand-painted. Some costumes had three or four designers working on them. It’s no wonder, as there are more than 10,000 hand-sewn beads on each sugar plum fairy costume.

“It was a huge undertaking,” McAllister says. “There were things that John wanted to update, so some things were slightly different from the original.”

This time, while it’s no less enchanting, the show is a little less frantic.

“It’s a matter of pulling it out and re-staging it,” McAllister says. “It’s a challenging production because there are 30 crew backstage, plus 68 dancers on-stage and 70-odd people in the pit.

“Technically, it’s a really hard show, because it’s so magical, a lot of transformations take place.”