The Royal Ballet gives us a visually magical Cinderella, a new production last seen in 2023, instead of The Nutcracker as our Christmas treat this year. And bearing in mind that it is panto season, it leans heavily towards the Step Sisters’ double drag act. Though we are told male and female dancers will alternate in the roles, as was originally intended.
The audience loves an overbearing—playing to the audience for laughs with knowing looks—Gary Avis dominating sister Luca Acri (think Morecombe and Wise), intimidating Cinderella’s father (Bennet Gartside). Avis has to have the first pick of men, outfit, and the larger orange. Orange you may ask… they are handed out at the Prince’s ball, probably a reference to Prokofiev’s satirical Love of Three Oranges opera. There is much play on size, too, with tall and short men.
Choreographer Frederick Ashton, one of the original 1948 Step Sisters (the other being Robert Helpmann), famed for his musicality, also had a cheeky streak. Music hall antics—the double act Step Sisters prancing like show horses—almost displace the love story. At times, I think Matthew Bourne must have had a naughty hand in this. But Prokofiev’s glorious music keeps it on track, sweeping us away with its skin-tingling Tchaikovskian waltzes. I am in musical heaven.
Also perceptible are Sleeping Beauty ballet influences: Fairies of the Four Seasons and a Fairy Godmother (Mayara Magri) in lilac, brought to fabulous life not only by the ballerinas (Isabella Gasparini, Mariko M Sasaki, Meaghan Grace Hinkis, Claire Calvert) but by stage and costume design.
The creative production team, masters at their crafts, excel themselves. Set designer Tom Pye, costume designer Alexandra Byrne, lighting designer David Finn, video designer Finn Ross, with illusions by Chris Fisher, take our breath away from the very start when snowy lights play on the auditorium during the overture.
Stops me closing my eyes and listening to the music… Eyes have to be wide open all the way through to capture an overabundance of special effects detail. Truly amazing talent is on vivid display, as is Marianela Nuñez in the lead role. She has it off to perfection and one expects no less from her. Stretching the music in her solos and pas de deux—with the kitchen broom and later with the Prince.
Her regular Prince, Vadim Muntagirov, is injured, but the replacement is Reece Clarke, so no complaints there, another in the tall, long-limbed danseur noble mould, head and shoulders above the rest.
Larger than life performances and projections… The Winter Fairy breaks open the house, its conservatory splits, its walls crumble and fairyland enters with its starry firefly nights and dancing stars. It’s as if dark moths have turned into colourful butterflies. The old lady Fairy Godmother (Olga Sabadoch) in disguise, black dried hydrangea lattice-look wings, transforms into Magri’s gossamer lightness.
The garden theme is continued by having the Prince’s ball in the grounds of his palace: Cinderella has to step from her carriage down a flight of steps—on pointe—imperiously feeling her way down. That takes some doing. At the end, these steps extend towards the moon and stars and constellations and zodiac symbols. Cinderella and the Prince ascend them. Was it all a dream as the clock ticked? Or is it a metaphor for life and wishful thinking?
Cinderella has been made afresh under Wendy Ellis Somes’s caring eye. Moira Shearer and Michael Somes took the lead roles in 1948. Ashton gifted Cinderella to Somes, and now his widow, Wendy Ellis Somes, who danced the role of Fairy Autumn, holds the rights. Several visits might be in order to unravel the new production’s wonders and, of course, to see other tempting casts.
So many versions of Cinderella have been passed down the ages, but this quote (found in the programme notes) from seventeenth century Italian poet Giambasta Basile, who wrote his own version of the tale, sums up its longevity: “in hearing pleasing things told, griefs vanish, troublesome thoughts are put to flight…”
Go and see some pleasing things, hammy acting hand in glove with high art, and be transported by the magic of theatre in the glittering seasonal wonderland that is Covent Garden.
Reviewer: Vera Liber