Ballet: Cinderella

Hey,

On Thursday I went to the Plymouth Royal Theatre to watch the Matthew Bourne Ballet: Cinderella with my cousin Maria.  Warning! This post will include small spoilers so read at your own risk if you are going to watch the performance.

This ballet told the story of Cinderella in the setting of the 1940’s while the blitz was taking place. I like this as it gave a unique style to the traditional story of Cinderella. In this storyline Cinderella has 2 step sisters and 2 step brothers and her father is not away on business but has been injured while serving his country in the war.

The scene that follows the introductory scene is where the rest of the family receive letters from their partners that are coming home from fighting in the war, but Cinderella doesn’t get a letter. Later their partners come to the house and the party starts which is portrayed by them dancing as couples and enjoying themselves. Meanwhile, Cinderella is looking after a pilot who has a head injury and had turned up at her doorstep, however when he was found by the stepmother he was tossed out. This led to Cinderella leaving to find her solider which happened while the rest of the family went out to go to a dance. The following scene was about Cinderella and her solider trying to find each other but they kept running into obstacles such as the police telling them that they are not meant to be on the street as it is curfew and some wild dogs.

The clear imagery of Cinderella that I believe is Cinderella leaving her shoe for the prince to find or in this case the pilot, was portrayed well by keeping the fundamentals of the Cinderella story, but creating a unique twist to the traditional story. As this unique Cinderella story was set during the blitz, she lost her shoe when she was the only survivor of a bomb raid and the shoe was left behind, for the pilot to find, when she was taken to the hospital. Afterwards, the pilot went looking through the underground for his love, meeting the escorts but not understanding what was happening so he got into a fight. They finally met in the hospital where the pilot was being treated for PSD by being given electronic shocks. At the end, Cinderella and her pilot left on the train once she had said goodbye to her father, stepbrothers and stepsisters, who had become friendly after the stepmother went to prison for trying to kill Cinderella in the hospital, by suffocating her with a pillow.

A way that this ballet differs from the traditional story of Cinderella is with the character, the fairy godmother because in this performance she is portrayed as an angel, who was male. I feel that this was a risky move but it paid off as I believe that the male angel fitted better into Matthew Bourne’s unique style of Cinderella than a female angel would have.

This ballet was amazing and took you along a magical journey of romance, even when there is fighting around you, which I feel connotes the view at no matter what is happening in your life there is an opportunity to find love you just have to see it. However, I would say that in areas of this ballet it became a bit confusing for the audience. For example, when Cinderella fell unconscious after the bombing, she dreamed of going to ‘Cafe le Paris’ where she met her solider and the danced all night until the clock struck midnight and she had to leave, but it wasn’t clear that this was a dream and you could only see so at the end of the ballet when looking back at what you had watched.

I was also disappointed in the genre of this ballet as after reading the programme I found that only 1 performer had trained at a ballet school and this was demonstrated as there wasn’t much traditional ballet happening. I feel that if there was some point work in the dream scene that it would have greatly improved and become even more magical and created the feeling of being transported there.

That being said, both myself and my cousin, Maria enjoyed this performance including the glass of white wine we had in the first interval. This is a great performance to see with friends and family and although I wouldn’t define it as a traditional ballet I would recommend this performance.

Thanks for reading

Please you the contact box or comment below

Amy x