For years, my daughter danced in the Nutcracker performance here, so she had never seen the entire performance in the Saenger before. We both enjoyed it!
Some of the Land of Sweets characters were not faithful to the traditions, and this was NOT welcome. In fact, some furry looking characters seemed very out of place and were a distraction; this is when I found that this wasn't the traditional version, which I had expected to see.
After all our years being a part of so many rehearsals and performances, we are familiar with how the script may be adjusted to suit different groups in different years. So, we do understand, but we simply did not recognize enough of the Land of Sweets to enjoy that SIGNIFICANT part of the performance.