The Royal Ballet, Cinderella Review ★★★★★

Like most Ashton ballets, Cinderella is a marvel of concision and meticulous story-telling all wrapped up in magnificent choreography, set to Prokofiev’s transporting score, and in the Royal Ballet’s latest production with more than a sprinkling of magic.

Cinderella was the first three-act ballet Sir Frederick Ashton, the company’s founder choreographer, created for The Royal Ballet in 1948. It deals with the essentials of the centuries-old fairy tale: there’s no wicked stepmother, no Queen presiding at the ball, no endless line of women of the realm eagerly trying on the lost slipper.

Instead, Ashton’s Cinderella is a story of transformation through time and the passing of seasons, where the dowdy, much put-upon girl becomes a regal princess who wins the love of a prince and lives happily ever after.

On opening night Marianela Núñez, an extraordinary technician with a deep understanding of the Ashtonian style, was a glorious Cinderella: modest in her scullery maid role, still grief-stricken at the loss of her mother, her dreams in Act I don’t go beyond dancing with her broom.

Marianela Nuñez as Cinderella in Cinderella, The Royal Ballet ©2024 ROH. Photo: Andrej Uspenski

In Act II, though, Núñez’s Cinderella becomes an almost otherworldly regal beauty in a glittering white tutu, her dancing dreamy and ethereal, instantly enrapturing Reece Clarke’s dashing Prince (pictured top).

In keeping with the underlying theme of time, the fairies who arrive to aid Cinderella’s transformation embody the four seasons, with Alexandra Byrne’s costumes giving each season its own colour marker: green and yellow for the Spring fairy, red and orange for Summer, tones of brown for Autumn and cold white for Winter. They are presided over by the Fairy Godmother, danced with benign authority by Mayara Magri.

Mayara Magri as the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, The Royal Ballet ©2024 ROH. Photo: Andrej Uspenki

For light relief this most English of choreographers resorts to that most English of seasonal entertainments, panto, for the figures of the two stepsisters, normally danced by men en travesti – not particularly evil, they are two grotesques, kitted out in outsize clouds of pink and purple, forever squabbling and, truth to tell, occasionally a little tiresome.

In the first cast the sisters are danced with OTT gusto by Gary Avis and Luca Acri.

Gary Avis and Luca Acri as Stepsisters in Cinderella, The Royal Ballet ©2024 ROH. Photo: Andrej Uspenski

The current production, fresh for last year’s revival, skilfully enhances Ashton’s themes. In Tom Pye’s set designs the focus of Cinderella’s home is a vaulted room with a large hearth and a wide mullioned window at the back, through which we can see leafless tree branches; these will transform into a magical glade as the Fairy Godmother operates the transformation.

In Act II the impressive palace facade has more than a hint of Art Nouveau about it, putting one in mind of 1920s French Riviera. And the vast staircase of Act III which the lovers slowly climb in the ballet’s apotheosis, suggests the ever after, beyond time, of their union.

Finn Ross’s video designs ably frame the action, with Chris Fisher’s illusions breaching the fourth wall to project swirling mosaics of light onto the house.

In short, The Royal Ballet’s Cinderella is a perfect Christmas outing for the whole family.

Cinderella will be relayed live to cinemas nationwide on 10 Dec with an encore on 15 Decemcer. To find a participation cinema near you click here