DANCE
Cinderella
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Reviewed by Mark Brown
The return of this Cinderella by Scottish Ballet’s artistic director Christopher Hampson (last seen in the 2015-16 winter season) will be welcomed by dance lovers throughout Scotland and, in the final days of this tour, the north east of England. The piece, which sparks with innovative and humorous touches, and boasts gloriously original sets and costumes by Tracy Grant Lord, was first staged by the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2007.
The beauty of this staging of Prokofiev’s famous ballet is that Hampson and Lord have allowed their imaginations to fly with the bold characterisations and contrasts that are embedded within the story. The tone is established early on, when Cinders (danced with a gorgeous, controlled grace by Sophie Martin) is tormented by a stepmother (Marge Hendrick on fabulously wicked, angular form) who literally spits on the memory of Cinderella’s late mother.
If Hampson’s choreography emphasises moral contrast, Lord’s designs place a premium upon distinctions of style and the magic of nature (Araminta Wraith’s flawless Fairy Godmother is in her element in Lord’s wonderfully ornate and magnified rose garden). The audacity of the production is underlined at the royal ball, which combines the Art Deco style of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie with a regal splendour that is redolent of the Habsburgs (even if the unlovely, two-dimensional chandeliers mark a small chink in Lord’s aesthetic armour).
A Christmas ballet should be fun, and this staging pops with comic moments. The springing dance of Jamiel Laurence’s splendidly-costumed grasshopper is a delight, as are the excruciating ballroom antics of the garishly-costumed stepsisters; a frenzied, clawing chip off the maternal block (Grace Horler) and her endearingly bumbling, shorter sibling (Kayla-Maree Tarantolo).
The scene in which the Prince (a smartly assertive Barnaby Rook-Bishop) searches, symbolically, in the dark for the owner of the glass slipper exemplifies the show’s unconventional bent. On a bare, pitch-black stage, the desperate aristocrat encounters a succession of disembodied, cleverly illuminated legs.
As Martin and Rook-Bishop dance the final, delightful pas de deux in the enchanted rose garden, it is charmingly apparent that the Prince is seeking to emulate his bride’s natural gracefulness, rather than expecting her to affect his regal airs – a contemporary-seeming nuance in a production that ultimately feels like a celebration of the triumph of good taste and judgment over vulgarity.
At Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until December 30, then touring until February 2. For further details, visit: scottishballet.co.uk
This review was originally published on the website of the Daily Telegraph on December 11, 2018
© Mark Brown
Scottish Stage 