“I’d start with Ballet Shoes first. It’s my favourite,” Meg Ryan’s character urges a mother in a bookstore in Nora Ephron’s 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail. Never out of print since it was first published in 1936, Noel Streatfeild’s “Story of Three Children on the Stage” has been a favourite with generations of readers, including former Children’s Laureate Jacqueline Wilson. Although adapted twice for television, Ballet Shoes has never been made into a play before. This Christmas, the National Theatre in London is staging it for the first time.
Three foundling girls – Pauline, Petrova and Posy – fetch up at a dilapidated house on the Cromwell Road some time in the 1920s, having been rescued by roving palaeontologist Great Uncle Matthew – “Gum”. Left in the care of his adult niece Sylvia (another orphan) and her old nanny, the girls become the Fossil sisters. They grow up in a spirited matriarchy of genteel poverty and plucky determination to follow their passions – acting, engineering and ballet. Described by Streatfeild as “a fairy story with its feet halfway on the ground”, Ballet Shoes is the perfect tale for our own age of austerity.
Kendall Feaver’s witty adaptation highlights the joys of “chosen families” and female solidarity. Prompted in part by the government’s clumsy “Cyber First” campaign, which showed a dancer and the line “Fatima’s next job could be in tech”, the play is a cri de coeur for the transformative power of the performing arts.
Feaver was inspired by the stage musical Wicked, a fairytale celebrating difference and girlhood. This season’s cinematic hits, Wicked and Moana 2, owe a debt to Frozen, which sparked a new wave of female-led musicals (including Disney’s Encanto). In these stories, sisterhood replaces romance as the emotional core, with heroines such as Glinda and Elphaba in Wicked or Anna and Elsa in Frozen tackling big tasks – ruling kingdoms, saving islands – far removed from Snow White’s days washing dishes while awaiting her prince.
Of course, Ballet Shoes and Wicked will be enjoyed by boys as much as Billy Elliot and Harry Potter are loved by girls. In the cinematic standoff between Gladiator II and Wicked – “Glicked” – the Russell Crowe sequel is clearly the “boy” option. But its 15 age rating, which excludes the peak Roman-obsession years, to Wicked’s PG may partly account for the witches’ triumph at the box office.
While Paul Mescal’s Lucius has slightly softer edges than Russell Crowe’s Maximus, the message is still the same: masculinity equals big muscles and a willingness to unleash hell. For younger children there is Paddington in Peru or the upcoming Lion King sequel Mufasa; in theatre, the London premiere of the Broadway musical of the mega-selling The Lightning Thief, about misfit teenager and “half-blood” son of Poseidon Percy Jackson. Too often the cultural models for boys are either furry or superheroes: all children need to see real (ish) reflections of themselves.
But post “Me-Too”, it is no surprise there is such an appetite for stories of female empowerment, resilience and friendship. In celebrating girlhood – in 1920s west London or the magical land of Oz – these fairytales of young women conquering the stage, the skies and the seas are themselves a cause for celebration.
• This leading article was not filed on the days on which NUJ members in the UK were on strike.
• This article was amended on 15 December 2024 to correct the spelling of Noel Streatfeild’s surname in the text and photo caption.
