Boston Ballet’s ‘Cinderella’ is a glass slipper that fits
Of all the classical story ballets, “Cinderella” has always been the stepsister. It’s the latest of them all, having premiered at the Bolshoi in Moscow in 1945, five years after Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” The story line is sober, and so is Prokofiev’s acerbic, bittersweet score, which makes limited room for the exotic, exuberant divertissements you’d see in “Swan Lake” or “Sleeping Beauty.” Yet Boston Ballet’s recent stagings have been hugely, and deservedly, popular, and the one that opened Thursday at the Citizens Bank Opera House, with Ji Young Chae in the title role and Jeffrey Cirio as her Prince, is the best yet.
Like “Romeo and Juliet,” “Cinderella” has been courted by many choreographers. Boston Ballet gave us Ron Cunningham in 1976 and 1981, Ben Stevenson in 1993, Michael Corder in 1997, and James Kudelka in 2005 and 2008. In 2014, artistic director Mikko Nissinen went back to the first Western version, Frederick Ashton’s from 1948. He’s said it’s the one that fits the company’s glass slipper, so no surprise that it was brought back in 2019 and is being presented again this time out.
As engaging as the more contemporary versions are — Corder’s with its full-moon motif, Kudelka’s with its photographer and pumpkin-headed ball guests — Ashton’s simplicity and purity are a breath of fresh air. He’s almost too austere. There’s no Stepmother here, and the Stepsisters don’t mistreat Cinderella so much as ignore her. Skinny and Dumpy, as he calls them, are played by men; Ashton himself danced Dumpy at the 1948 premiere. They squabble over accessories for the ball; they squabble over the attentions of the Tailor and the Dancing Master; at the ball they squabble over their prospective beaux, the comically monikered Napoleon and Wellington. They’re in a world of their own, forever fighting and then making up. Cinderella and the Prince are in their own world as well; much of their dancing at the ball takes place out of sight of the guests, and their brief pas de deux at the end, witnessed only by Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother and her entourage in the Prince’s garden, is hardly more than an envoi.
Boston Ballet has a new production this time out, purchased in conjunction with Cincinnati Ballet and Ballet West, and it scores on every count. The handsome opening scrim features a hearth with a broom flanked by portraits of Prokofiev and Ashton. Toer van Schayk’s huge but cozy set for acts one and three boasts exposed beams and large mullioned windows; the room is bare but for a small table and chairs, a looking glass, and the hearth over which Cinderella places a portrait of her late mother. The Fairy Godmother’s arrival with the four seasons is backed by a milkweed-like Milky Way; the Prince’s palace, in shades of lilac and periwinkle, looks out onto a park and a lake and statuary, and his garden in the final scene is ablaze with fireflies. Christine Haworth puts the seasons in romantic tutus to start and then, for the ball, switches to classical ones in the same appropriate colors. The Prince’s guests conjure 18th-century swains and shepherdesses in appealing tones of sky blue and pink and cream. Brandon Stirling Baker’s lighting is atmospheric but lets you see everything you need to.
Which on Thursday really was everything. Chae’s Cinderella was full of childlike delight, whether scolding her dancing-partner broom or spoofing her Stepsisters’ dance attempts; she seemed in a state of rapture throughout. Her pointe work was poetic, precise, and supremely musical, her manège crisp and controlled; Ashton’s steps have rarely looked so clean, so limpid. The Prince gets fewer chances to show off, but Cirio threw in some neat pirouettes and double tours into arabesque. What’s more important to the role is partnering, and here he excelled.
The Stepsisters all but stole the show. Paul Craig played Skinny as a domineering diva who snags for herself the more prepossessing chapeau, the more ostentatious fan, the bigger orange (in a segment where Prokofiev quotes from his 1921 opera “The
Love for Three Oranges”), and the taller Wellington as a dance partner. The fish dive with which she tried to cap her flouncy flamenco solo aborted when Wellington sneezed and she missed him altogether. John Lam’s Dumpy was sweet and dizzy, almost doll-like, fluttering her eyelashes and dropping her fan in front of Wellington, obsequious one moment, outrageously overacting the next. Kissing them each on the cheek before finally going off with her Prince, Cinderella knows they’re softies at heart.
Viktorina Kapitonova was a regal, lightfooted, mesmerizing Fairy Godmother in charge of Kaitlyn Casey’s sprightly Spring, Haley Schwan’s languid, sensuous Summer, Chisako Oga’s blustery Autumn, and Lauren Herfindahl’s icy yet warming Winter. Sun Woo Lee’s bemused, antic Jester did well enough with Ashton’s Energizer Bunny leaps and bounds, but his real contribution was his wideeyed commentary on the Stepsisters’ shenanigans. Daniel Rubin and Matthew Bates were irresistibly obtuse as Wellington and Napoleon; María Álvarez gave a baleful authority to the beggar woman who turns out to be the Fairy Godmother in disguise. The clock sequence went like clockwork; the ball guests’ mazurka was another treat. Ashton cut most of the music written for the Prince’s travels at the beginning of the third act, but here, to the final galop, we see everyone leaving the ball, Cinderella flitting by, the Prince in pursuit, and various humorous romantic scenarios involving the ball guests.
The Boston Ballet Orchestra under Mischa Santora didn’t let the introduction languish and thereafter conveyed the dark ecstasy of Prokofiev’s score.