“Nutcracker” has been a staple of City Ballet’s winter season for half a century now. For the stagehands, that’s 50 years of exploding the Stahlbaums’ living room in all directions; of hoisting the Christmas tree from a trap beneath the stage – higher, higher – until it has grown to mammoth proportions; of dropping a blizzard of white confetti on the leaping Snowflakes from the flies overhead. And then sweeping it up.”