CINDERELLA GOES GOTH

CINDERELLA is a refusenik in a fairytale village where all the girls are size eight blondes in pastel frocks.

By contrast, Cinderella, played by Carrie Hope Fletcher, wears big black Doc Marten boots, with fishnets and black lace gloves and is scornful of the fairy-tale aesthetic.

Writer Emerald Fennell has turned Cinders’s home town, Belleville, into a modern version of the fairytale village, complete with a ‘witch-dunking lake,’ a ‘convent for unsightly women’ and a ‘nip and tuck tavern.’

Fennell says: ‘Part of that is the world of the godmother, a sort of megalomaniacal, terrifying plastic surgeon-cum-couturier who has made everyone in that town look the way they look.’

Prince Charming has left town and his younger brother, Prince Sebastian, is the love interest. Fennell says that Sebastian is similar to Cinderella in that he’s always been overlooked, and that the romance springs from a point of friendship. ‘They have been friends their whole lives and suddenly everything changes.’

In keeping with her rebellious leading role, Carrie Hope Fletcher, pictured with Andrew Lloyd Webber, has spoken out in support of his rejection of Boris Johnson’s offer of help. ‘Yeah, I did get a few tweets that day going, “tell your mate Boris” and I’m like, “my mate Boris? What?” As if I’ve got a batphone!’

The glass slipper and Prince Charming remain, but gone is the idea that you have to change yourself for someone to love you.

Fletcher said: ‘I do wish this version of Cinderella had been around when I was 17, because I’d have been obsessed.’