As a kind of catch-all Christmas-and-several-birthdays treat we go as a family to the Royal Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker. It is a spellbinding piece of theatre, with production feats that dazzle as the Christmas tree, the dolls’ house and the toys all grow to giant proportions before your eyes, and the young girl Clara is transformed to the same scale as her nutcracker doll who comes to life, for he is really a prince under an enchantment. Battles between his soldiers and the Mouse King and his bewhiskered company follow.