A whole new Nutcracker Boston Ballet unveils its Colonial Theatre production BY JEFFREY GANTZ

Round one went to Boston: the Sox beat the Yankees and won the World Series. Round two starts up next weekend when Boston Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker goes up against a touring version of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Last year, you’ll remember, the Wang Center decided that the world’s most watched Nutcracker (between 115,000 and 140,000 people saw it each year) wasn’t bringing in enough money, so it booted the production from its traditional home in the Wang Theatre and signed up the show that the Boston Globe’s Christine Temin, who saw it in Fort Lauderdale last year, compared to McDonald’s. The Ballet then accepted Clear Channel/Broadway in Boston’s offer of a home in the Colonial Theatre this season and in the newly refurbished Opera House for the following three years. (The Lion King will be in residence at the Opera House this Christmas.) The bad news is that whereas the Wang Theatre has a capacity of 3600 (and The Nutcracker filled it to 75 percent on average), the Colonial holds just 1700 and the Opera House about 2400.

At a press conference at the company’s Clarendon Street home last Friday, Boston Ballet executive director Valerie Wilder and artistic director Mikko Nissinen were candid about their financial expectations for this year’s Nutcracker; Wilder estimated the shortfall at $2 million but said the difference had been built into the company’s operating budget. (For years, the company has been financially overdependent on The Nutcracker, so this is a direction it had to take in any case.) The production Boston Ballet is bringing to the Colonial is being billed as "more spectacular than ever," and though that has the sound of hype, the details that Wilder and Nissinen provided Friday were all substance.

This promises to be a more adult Nutcracker. Nissinen has reduced the number of choreographers from five three years ago to one — himself — this year. (Like every Nutcracker choreographer this side of Maurice Béjart and Mark Morris, he will, of course, be building on Petipa.) The Nutcracker Prince will turn into the Cavalier, so the same dancer will take both roles, as did Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, pulling off his scarlet military jacket to reveal a cream tunic underneath. Drosselmeier will have an expanded role, especially in the second act, where he’ll shepherd Clara and the Nutcracker; the Mouse King will be a kind of anti-Drosselmeier, as he is in the E.T.A. Hoffmann tale the ballet is based on.

The opening scrim will be show an aerial view of Nuremberg at night (reminiscent of the London of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan) with the Silberhaus home and Drosselmeier’s clock-tower workshop lit up; from there we go to the workshop (whose huge clock echoes the one in Metropolis) and then to the Silberhaus party, where through the ballroom’s three tall arched windows we’ll see snow falling. This year, the tree will grow so big that, in Clara’s dream, we’ll be under the branches. Many of the elements of the party will recur in her dream, and they won’t all be sugar and spice. The Nutcracker will be more of a love interest, and instead of a balloon, a giant snowflake will carry Clara and the Nutcracker to the Kingdom of Sweets. The second act will be better integrated in the first — Mother Ginger, for example, will be a version of Clara’s Grandmother, and she and the Polichinelles will dance with Clara and Droßelmeier.

Charles Heightchew’s new costume designs are Victorian sweet and sexy: gray silk jacquard with black velvet cuffs and jet buttons down the placket for the Governess; a black frock coat and breeches for the Mouse King; a smaller, more realistic head for the Nutcracker, who’ll do more dancing. The lighting by the Boston firm Color Kinetics is 21st-century: LED strips concealed within the on-stage portals will offer some 16.7 million choices, enabling the company to light up the stage like a Christmas tree.

There will be 45 performances this year, and lots of different casts, 11 different Prince/Sugar Plum couples, and the same for Snow King and Queen. So are Wilder and Nissinen worried about the competition from New York? "Bring in the Rockettes," Nissinen said. "Let’s have a fun series."

Boston Ballet presents The Nutcracker at the Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston Street in the Theater District, November 26 through December 31. Tickets are $25 to $80; call (617) 931-ARTS.