In 2021, Camila Cabello was a screen Cinderella with dreams of opening a boutique for her dresses. Last year, the film Sneakerella reimagined the fairytale heroine as a boy who longs to design trainers. Lyric Hammersmith’s Cinders outdoes them both. Tilly La Belle Yengo plays her effervescently as a self-declared “boss lady”, flogging her range of knitwear for rodents at a Shepherd’s Bush Market stall.
Respect to the design studio Good Teeth for their own preposterous costumes, including the snug furry suit worn by a gerbil who starts the party with a rejig of Pulp’s Disco 2000, here reflecting the year Cinderella was born. In the blink of a false eyelash, this pop-powered panto is on to Bootylicious when Emmanuel Akwafo makes quite the entrance, with an immaculate golden mane and a voice trembling with unseemly desires, as stepmum Lady Jelly Bottom. Pity the chap in the front row whose jumper screams “husband material” to her.
