Robert Tanitch reviews Cinderella at London Coliseum.
CINDERELLA is the best known fairy story in the world. It has been told many times by many nations. At the last count I think there was something like 1,259 versions.
Which would you prefer: An opera by Rossini, a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, a cartoon by Walt Disney or a World War 2 epic by Matthew Bourne?
Or would you prefer a traditional pantomime with Frankie Howerd as Buttons, Danny La Rue as the most glamorous and sexy sister and Julian Clary as Dandini?
When Martin Freeman played Buttons the audience was audibly very upset when Cinderella did not marry Buttons and married boring Prince Charming instead.
The best Cinderella I have seen remains Frederick Ashton’s ballet with Margot Fonteyn as Cinderella and Ashton and Robert Helpmann as the Ugly Sisters.
For his inspiration Christopher Wheeldon has chosen the Brothers Grimm version rather than the Charles Perrault version.
When I heard that Wheeldon had chosen Julian Crouch (of Shockheaded Peter fame) to do the set and costumes I thought the fairy tale would be really dark and really Grimm.
Sadly, it never is. And the choreography never measures up to Prokofiev’s score.
The production (a co-production with San Francisco Ballet) is danced by Dutch National Ballet and led by Anna Tsygankova and Matthew Golding, partners in life as well as dance. They are cast as Cinderella and Prince Guillaume.
Cinderella is accompanied by four male masked Fates and they give her a lift whenever she wants. The Prince has a best mate (Rori Wortmayer) who falls in love with the least evil of the two ugly sisters
There is no Fairy Godmother and so no pumpkin for coach, no mice for horses, no rat for coachman and no lizards for footmen. Cinderella goes to the ball by chariot, and looking for all the world like Boadicea driving into battle, her enormous cloak billowing in the wind.
The humour is poor. The Ugly Sisters are a major disappointment. The stepmother has a drunken solo. The best joke is a long queue of ladies sitting on Louis XVI chairs, waiting to see if the glass slipper fits their foot. The chairs, once they are all vacated, fly up and hover, surreally, over the company.
The major feature of the production is a beautiful hazel tree, designed by Basil Twist, which grows on Cinderella’s mother’s grave and blossoms before our very eyes. The final scene, all in white, in front of it, is lovely to look at.
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