Forget Disney; give me a dark fairytale, any day. I’ll take a deeply warped fable collected by the Brothers Grimm, livid with maiming or cannibalism – Freudian nightmares steeped in death and desire. They’re heady stuff.
The Grimm version of Cinderella is a shuddersome tale of parental neglect, toes sliced off and eyes pecked by birds. It also lies behind Christopher Wheeldon’s eye-catching ballet – premiered in Amsterdam in 2012, and more recently scaled up for English National Ballet’s regular summer season of productions performed in the round at the Royal Albert Hall.
Wheeldon doesn’t go full Grimm: no limbs are severed in this family-friendly show, though Cinderella’s nasty stepmother does swing a mallet to hammer her daughter’s foot into the famous lost slipper. The unfailingly charming production retains a dark backstory – a prologue shows Cinders’ family idyll harshly shattered by her mother’s early death.
Cinderella – an incisive Erina Takahashi on opening night – is relegated to skivvy when a sneering stepmother (excellent Sarah Kundi) arrives with two daughters: mean girls with cloying kisses and sneaky whispers. Meanwhile, the prince (Francesco Gabriele Frola) bridles at adult responsibility and the need to source a bride, so swaps places with his best pal Benjamin (an immensely springy Ken Saruhashi).
There is no fairy godmother: instead, four intense, stern-faced fates propel Cinderella towards her destiny. At her mother’s grave, spirits emerge from a tree nourished by her tears: Julian Crouch’s designs swerve wonderfully into fantastical folklore, summoning figures with vast potato heads, birds with skewer-sharp beaks, creatures with spiky skulls like conker shells.
The second act is the strongest: the royal ball takes place beneath a vast chandelier (loaned by Cameron Mackintosh, so perhaps a spare from Phantom of the Opera). Natasha Katz’s pinpoints of light pick out golden Cinderella and her scarlet-coated prince amid almost 50 swirling dancers in midnight blue. Takahashi has needle-sharp footwork and giddying spins; Frola displays romantic back bends and ardent leaps. Alone at last, they rotate with starburst rapture.
Everyone keeps circling, to achieve the near-360-degree perspectives this imposing arena requires. It suits the ball’s pleasure-seeking perpetual motion. Meanwhile, the younger stepsister creeps out from her bullying elder’s shadow and bonds with Benjamin (Katja Khaniukova makes her endearingly giggly in love). And stepmamma gets mortifyingly tipsy, lurching after the waiters and horribly queasy next morning.
All of this suits the grotesque underbelly of Prokofiev’s superb score: stirringly played by an orchestra under Gavin Sutherland, it’s full of bite and shadow. Wheeldon’s ballets can be people pleasers, but he and Crouch dig into a mordant wit. The last act opens with a seemingly endless stream of candidates for the missing slipper – women with ticklish feet or stinky soles. Even the birds and conkers chance their luck.
Finally, true love wins through, the lovers leaping happily over a meadow-speckled floor. For all its fluency, Wheeldon’s ballet does sometimes skim over its story’s dark potential – it’s attractive rather than enthralling. But as Takahashi soars, you can’t help enjoy her refusal to be earthbound.
