Cinderella – Gillian Lynne Theatre

Carrie Hope Fletcher and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt in Cinderella at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, London. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Cinderella continues at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Variants of the Cinderella story exist wherever folk tales have thrived. These days, we tend to regard the version collected by Charles Perrault as “the” version of the story – pumpkin, fairy godmother, glass slippers and all – but the themes of the story have been traced back as far back as ancient Greece.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this particular story’s longevity – quite apart from its literal rags-to-riches tale, any moral that comes with it – is its malleability. Each successive take finds something new to add to the tale, and the most successful of these succeed in grounding the story within a modern sensibility, even if the setting remains ostensibly medieval.

And this is the case with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of the tale, mostly down to the work of book writer Emerald Fennell. Her take is located in the city kingdom of Belleville, a looks-obsessed state where every man is a gym bunny and every woman wants a man. In this realm, Carrie Hope Fletcher’s Cinderella is a goth rebel, whose act of vandalism (defacing a statue of Prince Charming, who is announced dead at the start of the show) is enough to destroy Belleville’s image and send the royalty heading to bankruptcy.

The only solution, Rebecca Trehearn’s gloriously camp Queen decrees, is to have a royal wedding to restore the state’s popularity. But her surviving son, Sebastian (Michael Hamway, understudying for Ivano Turco who normally plays the role) is, like his friend Cinders, far from enamoured with Belleville’s crop of eligible bachelorettes. Fennell has Sebastian perpetually surrounded by muscled he-men whose admiration for his late brother would be subtly homoerotic, if this production knew how to be subtle about anything.

Fennell’s previous writing work ranges from children’s novels to more adult fare including Killing Eve and Promising Young Woman, and that range is put to occasionally jarring use here. Her dialogue is snappy and, at times, abrasive, with flashes of smut that are rather more direct than the sort of innuendo one may experience in panto retellings of this tale.

That said, the first half hour of the show struggles to set up the story, and the variation from the tale we know, without whole swathes of exposition that can feel like wading through narrative treacle. Things are not helped by David Zippel’s lyrics, which generally lack the sparkle of Fennell’s book. There are several occasions where it feels as if he and Lloyd Webber’s melodies are working in opposition; syllable emphasis is just a bit off, or word choices are made to force a rhyme despite being inappropriate for either the character or the mood of the moment.

And if lyrics and melody must battle so, at least one is buoyed by Lloyd Webber making sure that such an easy victory is at least fought for. The combination of lush orchestrals and rock guitars are nothing new for him, of course, but there is a lightness and joy in his composition here that is infectious. With this and its predecessor at the venue, School of Rock, it feels as if at this stage of his career, Andrew Lloyd Webber has found a youthful vigour once again.

That is reflected in some sumptuous design by Gabriela Tylesova, whose sets and costumes merge the modern day with the feel of a Renaissance pop-up book (and more than one nod to Lloyd Webber’s love of Pre-Raphaelite art). Bruno Poet’s lighting designs enhance throughout, culminating in a cathedral scene in which the combination of Tylesova’s delicate nods to Gothic architecture and Poet’s coloured lighting produce a stained-glass effect that is pure fairytale.

But even the wonders of sound and vision can’t disguise that the two romantic leads are given Act I songs where they monologue about their thoughts, their predicament and their love for the other. There’s nothing internal to overcome, no depth there – any that shines through is imbued by Fletcher and Hamway in spite of, rather than because of, the script.

But then, in all versions of this tale it is rarely the central characters who are the most appealing, and so it is here. One of the chief attractions is Victoria Hamilton-Barritt’s Stepmother, clearly having a ball with her scenery-chewing socialite and stealing every scene lucky enough to be graced with her presence. She and Trehearn, when united, form a particularly engaging double act, the two women exchanging barbs as they recognise themselves in each other – desperate social climbers who feel they have no worth without social status.

Hamilton-Barritt is also offset well by Georgina Castle and Laura Baldwin as Cinderella’s half-witted stepsisters. The concept of blonde beauty-obsessed young women being slow on the uptake is neither new nor original – and in a storyline which attempts to be so progressive elsewhere, it comes close to reinforcing a damaging stereotype. One can’t, however, fault Castle and Baldwin for their performances, which elevate the characters beyond the caricature.

Less well served is Gloria Onitiri’s Godmother – presented here as a costumier and cosmetic surgeon who helps Cinderella shed her goth look in time for the ball. At first, it looks as if Fennell has hit upon an original take on this character, suggesting Fletcher’s Cinderella is engaging upon a Faustian pact, with potentially deadly consequences if the terms – which include getting home by midnight – are not kept. And yet, after the ball sequence in which Cinderella fails to win her prince, there are no consequences of note, which retrospectively weakens Onitiri’s already slender role even further.

And that ball sequence? Much has been made of how the theatre can revolve both the stage and the stalls, and this is put to good use for Act II’s opening waltz, the whole world of Belleville spinning until the ballroom floor is presented in the round rather than in Act I’s proscenium arch presentation. This is a beautiful transition which, unfortunately, renders Cinderella’s grand entrance to the ball invisible to sections of the audience sitting in the Circle. One would have hoped that director Laurence Connor might have considered the entire audience for this pivotal moment, rather than just those paying for the premium seats.

That is just one of several noticeable flaws in Cinderella which, in any other show, might have limited one’s enjoyment. However, thanks to the stunning designs, Lloyd Webber’s majestic musical scoring and the actors’ character work, those bumps along the way become easy to ride over. And that means one can’t help but feel charmed by this new take on this oldest of fairy tales.

Scott Matthewman