Photo: Andy Ross
(Reviewed at Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 4th January, 2019.)
Scottish Ballet’s Cinderella, with choreography by artistic director Christopher Hampson, is a grand, swirling hybrid of folk tale and high camp, Hollywood glamour. It’s testament to Hampson that this satisfies on numerous levels.
Styled by Tracy Grant Lord, the aesthetic is curling sensuous Art Nouveau, albeit with a Rococo colour palette of pinks, greens (but jarringly, also occasional bursts of fiery orange.) Tendrils and rose motifs frame the set: an apposite design, as they symbolise both the blossoming of love, and the tentative early stages of transitioning from girlhood into womanhood.
Photos: Rimbaud Patron
Bethany Kingsley- Garner as Cinderella gives a performance infused with pathos and innocence, but never a simpering girl waiting around to be ‘woken’ by the Prince (Christopher Harrison). She keeps her own counsel.
There are typically inventive Scottish Ballet flourishes: the Grasshopper, played with puckish elan by Constant Vigier, seems powered by invisible springs, and there is a witty sequence with the team of Silk Moths and Spiders, who embrace Cinders in a tender cat’s cradle.
But it’s Constance Devernay’s Petite Stepsister who elicits both laughter and delighted squeals. She displays excellent comic timing, and her every pratfall, slide and goofball slip betrays her essentially good- hearted nature. She’s a marvellous foil to her tall sister (Aisling Brangan) the epitome of entitled predatory brat, all extended limbs and unsubtle come-ons.
This being classic rags to riches, though, there’s the inevitable drop of dark stuff as a counterpoint. Kingsley- Garner’s first solo is full of the hurt of maternal loss and adolescent vulnerability.
Photos: Rimbaud Patron
And with the wonderful complex Prokofiev score performed by the Scottish Ballet orchestra, this is a production which dazzles, with its eerie, sprightly and ultimately euphoric sequences.
At Theatre Royal, Glasgow until 12th January, then touring to Aberdeen, Inverness and Newcastle.
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