CINDERELLA. To 25 January.
London
CINDERELLA
by Charles Way
Polka Theatre To 25 January 2003
10.30am & 2pm 25 January
11am & 2,30pm 18-20, 23-24,27,31 December,3 January
2pm 11-12,19 January
2pm & 5pm 21,28 December, 4,18 January
Schools' performances daytimes 8-10,15-17,21-24 January
BSL Signed 21 December 5pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS 020 8543 4888
boxoffice@polkatheatre.com
Review Timothy Ramsden 17 December
A pleasant, morally sophisticated play well-suited to over-6s.This is no pantomime: more an elegant 18th century diversion. with plentiful bursts of Mozart, both through the sound system and printed on the stage settings. The man himself makes several appearances as Prince Sebastian's friend Wolfie, leaping in and out, a free spirit in the restrictive court.
The music used emphasises movement: grand, solemn or – usually – scurrying. But there are moments in Mozart where time seems suspended, and that's the play's starting point. For Cinderella, her mother's death has stopped time. Her opening mourning is discovered along with a death's head tableau. In this mood she rejects the life offered by the scruffy boy who invades her memory-space. Yet chasing him off's her first sign of life.
Clocks have stopped in her clockmaker father's house, while in the palace the King stays hopelessly in bed, ineffectual against the sickness stalking the city beneath him, frustrating his son Sebastian's will to life.
But a little bird keeps telling Cinderella to be positive; it's her disguised fairy godmother and a hard time she has doing her work. This is a scowling Cinders who greets dad's remarriage with temper tantrums, biting and playing tricks on her new relations. For their part, the new life seems downwardly mobile, from a large country home to a cooped-up little town-house.
So, the point's less the simple identification of good and evil, more the need to set time going again: to live the life that's ticking along anyway. Elisa de Grey scowls and smears her face with soot (a gentle metaphor for self-harming) with convincing bad temper, then in a magical snowfall balcony scene (high point of the otherwise adequate but rather stolid production) blossoms with a smile.
Andrea Davy and Kirsty Hoiles find the right note for the step-sisters initially friendly to Cinders. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Robin Armstrong provide youthful energy, but Simon Holmes' king suffers from over-fussy mannerisms and Sally Armstrong fares better as stepmother than fairy godmother.
Way's one lapse is his occasional forced attempts at humour. Roman Stefanski's production occasionally loses energy, but there remains plenty to enjoy in this elegantly adventurous version of the famous story.
Cinderella: Elisa de Grey
Prince Sebastian/Boy: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Fairy Godmother/Maria: Sally Armstrong
King Leopold/Father: Simon Holmes
Wolfie: Robin Armstrong
Constanze: Andrea Davy
Aloysia: Kirsty Hoiles
Director: Roman Stefanski
Designer: Alex Bunn
Lighting: Jim Simmons
Sound/Musical Arrangements: Julian & Stephen Butler
Choreographer: Ian Waller
2002-12-18 09:26:13