THE final sticky bit of sweet temptation has been fixed onto the Gingerbread House. The Witch is reading recipes for oven-roasted kid – kid, as in child, not goat – while, somewhere in the wings, anxious parents are wondering why their little ones are still not home from school. Welcome to the Grimm tale of Hansel and Gretel, and to the return of Christopher Hampson’s vividly-staged version for Scottish Ballet – it opens at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh tonight and will be touring Scotland in the New Year.

Created in 2013, Hansel & Gretel was the first full-length work Hampson had made on the company since coming into post as its artistic director the previous year. He’d listened over and over to the operatic score by Humperdinck (from 1893), sketched out ideas and steps in his head, but then taken time to get to know the dancers before going into the studio. The resulting ballet – along with Wee Hansel & Gretel, for younger audiences – not only showcased their talents and technique, it encouraged their acting skills, ensuring audiences understood that fairy-tales can hold real life Awful Warnings, and salutary home truths, en route to happy endings.

Three years on, has Hampson been tempted to change anything? “It really will be as people remember it,” he says. “The dark side to the story, the scary bits – and the absolute joy that follows – are still in place, but this time round I’ve been able to push some of the ideas a bit further, make others more focussed. You always know, in rehearsals, those points in a scene that you’re longing to tweak, but you’ve got deadlines. Once you start to unpick something, it’s like a see-saw – the balance shifts, elsewhere. It’s only second time around that you can re-visit those moments and try something else.”

However, even if he’d left his steps untouched, there would still have been changes afoot. Since 2013, dancers have come and gone, and castings have had to alter accordingly. Moreover Santa has given the original Gretel, Sophie Martin, a very special present. After 12 years of being on-stage during the festive season, never able to be in France with her family, even briefly at Christmas, Martin is enjoying a well-deserved sabbatical. “It’s a really interesting prospect for a choreographer,” says Hampson. “Do other dancers bring something else to the role, or do they take something away? Did what you created all hinge on that one artist you made it on? And there is a certain nervousness at first – are you making appropriate choices? But there’s also a fresh energy to it.

"You get to see how your established dancers have evolved: two of the first Gretels – Constance Devernay and Bethany Kingsley-Garner – were both promoted to Principal in the summer, they’re now leading the company and they’re coming back to the role with so much more experience. At the same time, we’ve got Kayla-Maree Tarantolo as Gretel and Araminta Wraith as the Witch. Neither of them were with Scottish when we did Hansel & Gretel, so they’ve never even seen the piece. It’s a new challenge for them, and I hope they’re finding it an exciting and rewarding one.”

Kayla-Maree Tarantolo’s bright eyes and happy smile say it all – “I’m lost for words.....” The young Sydney-born dancer only joined Scottish Ballet in the autumn, going on as part of the full-company staging of Crystal Pite’s Emergence. “I had no idea I was going to be given any role, especially not this one. It’s an amazing opportunity, but there is a lot to process. The acting has been the real challenge for me. Dancing – I’ve been taught ballet from a really young age, so I can understand, and relate to, the steps. But acting is something I’m having to look into! And handling the props is another test. It maybe looks like it doesn’t matter how you pick something up, but it’s actually crucial what hand you’re holding a bag or a cake in, because it could so easily be wrong for the next move. Scary!”

Constance Devernay, who’s been helping Tarantolo find her own “inner Gretel” agrees that – despite doing it all before, in 2013 – the props, especially the edible ones, can spring their own surprises. “I remember three years ago, when Chris (Hampson) said ‘by the way, you have to eat on-stage’, thinking ‘ohhh! really?’. Because you wouldn’t usually think of eating before dancing a major solo – not even for a sugar rush. But it’s an important part of the scene, so you find a way to do it – in small mouthfuls.”

Meanwhile her own memories of leaving home when she was only 12 have fed dramatically into Gretel’s solo in the forest. “I left home, in the north of France to go to ballet school in the south,” she explains. “I was so excited, it was to be this new adventure – then suddenly, it hit me. My parents... I was no longer with them. There was no nearby safety-net. And that moment in the forest with Hansel, when Gretel realises what she’s done – it’s that exact same shock for me. A moment when you are so alone, and you have no idea what’s going to happen. And it has been your choice, and now it’s your responsibility, your fault, if it goes really wrong. Every time I’m in that forest, that feeling comes. I think, this time, because the steps are already in our bodies, it will be possible to concentrate on those kinds of memories, really make them a part of Gretel.”

Bethany Kingsley-Garner is, likewise, really looking forward to dancing Gretel again. “I feel, three years on, I’m a different person – a different dancer – and I want to add some finishing touches, because I have a better sense of who I am, and who Gretel is. Because I’m a very organised person – the one who says ‘Come on, we’re going now. This is what we’re doing’ – I find Gretel bossing Hansel is easy. But finding how to show her compassion is, I think, more complicated until she has this beautiful solo in Act Two that is almost like a lament. She looks at Hansel in the cage, and at the Witch, and her whole body just drops, her head goes down, as she realises what she’s done. I think audiences see there’s a different side to Gretel, a true self, one they can love.”

If that episode calls up Kingsley-Garner’s acting skills, the food-fight is “probably one of my favourite things."

"You really get to channel your inner child – get sticky and messy. I recommend marshmallows – very gooey, but they slip down smoothly.”

Such happy antics are, of course, prompted by the Witch’s cruel hunger for eating little children. Sssshhh. . . Araminta Wraith is actually a vegetarian. On-stage, however, she is relishing every morsel of the Witch’s chameleon presence. “I love narrative ballets,” she says. “I love the twists you get in a narrative character, something I can get my teeth into and enjoy as a dancer. The fact that this Witch can be so glamourous, almost seductive, at the start means reeling everyone into believing she’s this lovely, kind lady who’s all smiles and pockets full of sweets.

"Then you get this total transformation into someone who is truly evil from the inside out. And for me, that’s such a brilliant journey to make. You get to explore so many different sides, and styles – acting, and dancing. You’ve got the pointe-work when she’s being floaty and magical – and then, in the cottage, you’ve got this mixture of grotesque comedy and horror as she lures the children in.”

Wraith chuckles, with evident glee at the very prospect. “I seem to have developed some strange ‘witch-walk’ recently. It’s been creeping up on me... And the great thing is that Chris allows you to develop your own personality for the character, as long as you are following his scenario and his choreography. I wasn’t here when they did it first time round, so I can more or less be my own role model – and I’m loving it.”

All four women admit to having a sweet tooth – so look out, little Gingerbread House, your walls might be in line for some surreptitious nibblings. . .

Scottish Ballet perform Hansel & Gretel at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh from tonight until Saturday, December 31. The show then tours to Theatre Royal, Glasgow (Thu 5-Sat 14 Jan); His Majesty’s, Aberdeen (Wed 18-Sat 21 Jan); and Eden Court, Inverness (Wed 25-Sat 28 Jan).