Scottish Ballet Cinders Festival Theatre January 5th 2024 Review
Scottish Ballet Cinders is at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh from Friday 5 to Saturday 20 January and the first thing to make clear to anyone planning to go and see this show is that, although based on the classic fairy tale that we all know so well, this is Cinderella with a twist, an innovative re-think of the possibilities within the traditional narrative (which already has many variants).
I normally try to avoid giving plot lines away in a review, but there is no way round it this time, but I will keep it to the minimum of details. In this story by Scottish Ballet, Cinders is the much loved and very happy child of the Rose Family who run a busy and prosperous drapery store. One night tragedy strikes and a devastating fire destroys the store. The only survivor, by some miracle of fate, is the now orphan child Cinders. The business is taken over by new brash owner Mrs Thorne and her self-entitled family who change everything in their new business and have no respect for Cinders who still works in the store. Cinders’ dead mother and father also get re-visited from a new perspective in this production.
The scene is set, and the story now takes its twists. On different performances Cinders is either a young man who with a little bit of magical help goes to the ball and falls in love with the princess, or a young woman who falls in love with the prince, but until that stage curtain rises audiences do not know which. Tonight it was the story of Cinders and the Princess, and which performance you choose to go to will depend on whether you want to stay on safer traditional story ground or take a look from a different perspective.
Taking this bold step to re-imagine such a well-known and well-loved story was always going to be a huge gamble for Scottish Ballet, so has it worked on tonight’s story as Cinders and the Princess fall in love at the ball and the search to find the owner of that slipper/shoe left at the stroke of midnight commences? The answer to this big question is yes and no to varying degrees throughout the story.
To switch the gender of the lead characters (or any) in a ballet is not like doing it on a dramatic stage or musical performance as here both male and female roles have their own very distinctive language of dance techniques and their very distinctive relationships with each other. With Cinders, Christopher Hampson has drawn on his earlier 2015 production of Cinderella for Scottish Ballet and with his skilful and often very subtle choreography re-written the dialogue of the dance between the Princess and Cinders (performed tonight by Marge Hendrick and Evan Loudon) and by doing so the gender prominence of this work now changes completely too as it is the male lead who now dominates and performs so much of this ballet.
There are some wonderful opportunities here for any dancer too in the roles of the two sisters (Not step-sisters in this story) and their brother, and performing comedy ballet, looking like you can do everything at times so awkwardly, must take a lot of skill and a lot of concentration to overcome one’s own muscle memory that knows exactly what to do and do it so well. Every fairy story needs a foe (if not a villain) and that role tonight is so well performed by soloist Aisling Brangan who is obviously loving every minute of being the truly awful person that Mrs Thorne is. Interestingly though, the Thorne family are not the grotesque caricatures of some fairy stories but instead exaggerations of people that we perhaps recognise all too well ourselves.
There are some moments where this is not a seamless transferral of roles though and that is often more to do with the music than anything that Scottish ballet have done, as Prokofiev scored the music for this ballet with a clear story in mind, clear gender roles and that still shows through in his music in many places. Am I convinced that this is a great love at first sight story though? Not always. There are also moments where this story is simply not flowing easily and without the benefit of a programme to shed light on some important scenes they could be difficult to fully comprehend in their importance to the overall narrative.
Tomorrow night (Saturday) is one of the last chances before her final performance on January 19 to catch principal dancer Bethany Kingsley-Garner performing on stage before moving onto new creative directions in 2024.
It would be interesting to watch this production of Cinders back to back to get a better perspective of just how much the choreography has been adapted to meet the different gender roles and how the overall story works in both performances and being able to compare one to the other.
Whichever one you choose though, set in a wonderful drapery store this production had to have equally wonderful costume and stage sets and Elin Steele has done a great job on both. There are also so many fine little moments of character performances going on here that are all too easy to miss plus the always inspired music of Prokofiev, all coming together here to make this production a festive family treat.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
I normally try to avoid giving plot lines away in a review, but there is no way round it this time, but I will keep it to the minimum of details. In this story by Scottish Ballet, Cinders is the much loved and very happy child of the Rose Family who run a busy and prosperous drapery store. One night tragedy strikes and a devastating fire destroys the store. The only survivor, by some miracle of fate, is the now orphan child Cinders. The business is taken over by new brash owner Mrs Thorne and her self-entitled family who change everything in their new business and have no respect for Cinders who still works in the store. Cinders’ dead mother and father also get re-visited from a new perspective in this production.
The scene is set, and the story now takes its twists. On different performances Cinders is either a young man who with a little bit of magical help goes to the ball and falls in love with the princess, or a young woman who falls in love with the prince, but until that stage curtain rises audiences do not know which. Tonight it was the story of Cinders and the Princess, and which performance you choose to go to will depend on whether you want to stay on safer traditional story ground or take a look from a different perspective.
Taking this bold step to re-imagine such a well-known and well-loved story was always going to be a huge gamble for Scottish Ballet, so has it worked on tonight’s story as Cinders and the Princess fall in love at the ball and the search to find the owner of that slipper/shoe left at the stroke of midnight commences? The answer to this big question is yes and no to varying degrees throughout the story.
To switch the gender of the lead characters (or any) in a ballet is not like doing it on a dramatic stage or musical performance as here both male and female roles have their own very distinctive language of dance techniques and their very distinctive relationships with each other. With Cinders, Christopher Hampson has drawn on his earlier 2015 production of Cinderella for Scottish Ballet and with his skilful and often very subtle choreography re-written the dialogue of the dance between the Princess and Cinders (performed tonight by Marge Hendrick and Evan Loudon) and by doing so the gender prominence of this work now changes completely too as it is the male lead who now dominates and performs so much of this ballet.
There are some wonderful opportunities here for any dancer too in the roles of the two sisters (Not step-sisters in this story) and their brother, and performing comedy ballet, looking like you can do everything at times so awkwardly, must take a lot of skill and a lot of concentration to overcome one’s own muscle memory that knows exactly what to do and do it so well. Every fairy story needs a foe (if not a villain) and that role tonight is so well performed by soloist Aisling Brangan who is obviously loving every minute of being the truly awful person that Mrs Thorne is. Interestingly though, the Thorne family are not the grotesque caricatures of some fairy stories but instead exaggerations of people that we perhaps recognise all too well ourselves.
There are some moments where this is not a seamless transferral of roles though and that is often more to do with the music than anything that Scottish ballet have done, as Prokofiev scored the music for this ballet with a clear story in mind, clear gender roles and that still shows through in his music in many places. Am I convinced that this is a great love at first sight story though? Not always. There are also moments where this story is simply not flowing easily and without the benefit of a programme to shed light on some important scenes they could be difficult to fully comprehend in their importance to the overall narrative.
Tomorrow night (Saturday) is one of the last chances before her final performance on January 19 to catch principal dancer Bethany Kingsley-Garner performing on stage before moving onto new creative directions in 2024.
It would be interesting to watch this production of Cinders back to back to get a better perspective of just how much the choreography has been adapted to meet the different gender roles and how the overall story works in both performances and being able to compare one to the other.
Whichever one you choose though, set in a wonderful drapery store this production had to have equally wonderful costume and stage sets and Elin Steele has done a great job on both. There are also so many fine little moments of character performances going on here that are all too easy to miss plus the always inspired music of Prokofiev, all coming together here to make this production a festive family treat.
Review by Tom King © 2024
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com