As a dancemaker, Matthew Bourne is a genre unto himself. Well-known tales with a twist is the formula, with story-driven dance, big production values and Lez Brotherston’s slick sets. This time it’s ‘Cinderella’, transposed to the Blitz and given a cinematic treatment complete with Pathé newsreels and explosive bomb blasts in surround sound.
The reimagining works and the real triumph is Prokofiev’s score, revealed anew as a work of soaring drama – menacing, romantic and totally cinematic. At Bourne’s best, the action is tied so directly to the music, it’s as if Prokofiev wrote the score just for him.
Bourne takes liberties with the story, so instead of a wand-waving Fairy Godmother, a male angel acts as an invisible hand of fate, and Cinderella’s transformation takes place in her own imagination. Instead of meeting her prince at the ball, Cinders falls for an injured pilot who arrives at her door, but as the air raid siren wails the pair are left searching for each other through the smoke and dust of London streets, patrolled by gangs of leaping wardens in gas masks. It becomes less a fairy story and more a tale of the intensity and urgency of wartime love.
With a tendency towards silent-movie mugging, Bourne’s characters are rarely drawn in more than two dimensions, but Kerry Biggin as the speccy, mousy, put-upon Cinders, acts her socks off to stretch that mould. Michela Meazza is great too, as her glamorous step-mother, sour-faced with gin and petty cruelties.
Although the brilliant opening gives way to some filler scenes and plot confusions, this ‘Cinderella’ has enough romance, fantasy and fun to keep us hooked.