At last – a spell-bindingly imaginative new pantomime
Cinderella Nuffield Southampton ★★★★★
If you’ve had an eyeful of the glitter, spectacle and manufactured cheer that invariably deck theatres at Christmas, this decidedly lo-fi new musical offers a refreshing antidote. Michael Fentiman’s melancholic update of the fairy tale doesn’t abandon the central plot – there’s still a ball, there’s still a prince or two, and there’s still a fairy godmother, in the form of a cheery Welsh policeman – but it does boldly shift the emphasis.
So, Ella (Valda Aviks) is a recently widowed pensioner grieving for her beloved Bert, who one day popped out to the shops and never came back. Her new friend Cinders (Lydia White), an unhappy, withdrawn college student who still leaves voice messages for her recently deceased dad, keeps Ella company as part of a local buddy scheme. Together these two lonely women bond over tea in Ella’s cosy living room, the walls decked with clocks, a photo of Bert perched on top of the telly – until Ella’s ghastly two nieces, a tottering, Euro-trash double act in leather and gold lamé, turn up out of the blue, insisting that uncle Bert left everything to them in his will and hell bent on putting Ella into a home. Cinderella is by the same creative team behind the hit musical version of Amélie, and if it isn’t quite as accomplished as that show, its intimate poeticism feels no less ambitious.
The seven-strong cast double up as musicians, on fiddle, guitar, accordion and piano, weaving Barnaby Race’s Gallic folk score through the action, often to beautifully atmospheric effect. The circular, art deco set is dimly lit (at times, a bit too dimly – it can feel as if you are looking down a smeary old telescope) and bathed in sepia hues, as befits the elegiac mood of a piece in which pretty much everyone, including Harry, an old time crooner who is putting on a benefit gig at his former stomping ground The Midnight Ballroom, is in mourning for their past.
This may not sound like much fun, but fear not: Imelda Warren-green and Emma Darlow’s deliciously awful Ivanka and Melania provide a steady stream of blissful comic relief, dropping smart one liners about Tinder and Will.i.am as they stagger about in search of someone rich to keep them in pina coladas, and hacking away at toes and heels when Harry and his love-lorn grandson come visiting with two abandoned shoes. The show’s emotional sophistication and, conversely, convoluted narrative (a weird bodyswap scene between Cinders and Ella at the benefit gig doesn’t work) might be a challenge to some younger audiences but, on the evening I saw it, its old-fashioned romanticism held everyone spellbound.
Above all, its message – that love, and the possibilities for reinvention that it brings, is a story for the old as well as the young – is a joyous one. Lucky Southampton, to have such an imaginative, homespun Christmas show right on its doorstep.
Cinderella is on at Nuffield until Jan 5. Tickets: 02380 671771; nstheatres.co.uk