Short of sparkle: Cinderella-in-the-round, at the Royal Albert Hall, reviewed

Having been unexpectedly delighted by the Royal Ballet’s revival of Christopher Wheeldon’s Corybantic Games at Covent Garden last week, I slapped my wrists for underrating him as a prolific craftsman. After a second exposure to his Cinderella, handsomely mounted by English National Ballet at the Royal Albert Hall, I have reverted to that ho-hum view.

Clearly feeling he needed to excavate something different out of a familiar tale and Prokofiev’s score, Wheeldon commissioned the help of the playwright Craig Lucas in constructing a new scenario that removes most of the fantasy and attempts to establish some psychologically realistic back story. A wasted effort.

She’s no longer the embodiment of virtue downtrodden, just another girl with dreams above her station

The stepsisters become neither ugly nor malicious, merely dimwits. Like Siegfried in Swan Lake (or possibly Rudolf in Mayerling), the prince is feeling parental pressure to grow up and make adult choices. Instead of being enabled by a Fairy Godmother with a magic wand, Cinderella is carried along by four figures of fate, who seem fugitives from one of Pina Bausch’s gloomier expressionistic lucubrations. There’s no transformation from scullery waif to supermodel or pumpkin to coach: Cinderella arrives at the ball in a rather ordinary frock.

All this serves to weaken the message that the meek shall inherit the Earth if only they give the odd crust to the poor and hang on in there. Cinderella is no longer the embodiment of virtue downtrodden, just another girl with dreams above her station, so why should we care? One is left wondering quite what the prince sees in her, beyond the right shoe size. The ‘original’ Perrault plot carries far more emotional resonance.