Ashton’s Cinderella for The Royal Ballet focusses on steps but ignores the story

United Kingdom Prokofiev, Cinderella: Dancers of The Royal Ballet, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Jonathan Lo (conductor). Broadcast live from the Royal Ballet & Opera, Covent Garden, London, to Cineworld Basildon, Essex, 10.12.2024. (JPr)

I came back to this restaging of Cinderella – Sir Frederick Ashton’s first major three-act ballet for a British company – hoping for a better reaction than I had when it was first seen last year. However, and despite it garish costumes, The Royal Ballet’s Cinderella pales (!) in comparison to other versions I have seen recently; whether a confusing one from Christopher Wheeldon (review here) and certainly when Rudolf Nureyev brilliantly took Cinders to Hollywood (review here).

Gary Avis who was responsible with Wendy Ellis Somes (widow of Michael Somes, Ashton’s first prince) in getting Ashton’s Cinderella back on stage discussed the Ashton (or English) choreographic style and said ‘You work up from the ground up … so we always think about the intricate footwork … fleet of foot, so it’s really important we make sure the footwork is really intricate and precise. Then you work up the body to the waist, then we try and give that the most extravagant bend that we possibly can … you can’t have a better workout, or a keep fit workout, than actually doing a piece of Ashton choreography. Then you get up to the shoulders, the twist in the waist gives you the épaulement, then you layer on top the elegance … and then obviously the musicality is something that is really prominent in this and his musicality is second to none.’ The dancers of The Royal Ballet have impeccable technique, so we definitely saw the benefits of the hard work from Avis and Ellis Somes in this Cinderella.

Costume designer Alexandra Byrne has spoken about how the Stepsisters are fashion/consumer victims and are hothouse, cultured flowers whilst the Fairies of the Four Seasons and Cinderella are very much to do with meadow and wildflowers. There is a vaulted home for Cinderella’s family with a stage-wide mullion window at the back. As set designer Tom Pye outlined, nature is a constant thread in all the acts, with meadow and glided flowers in the first one to frame the dance. This is especially when Pye brings the Seasons into the room (aided by Finn Ross’s video) to little-by-little slowly decay and destroy it to just leave behind the arches of the original room. In the second act, rather than being inside a ballroom it is now a garden party. Conductor Jonathan Lo explained how Prokofiev ‘always wanted to make a point of writing a score where everything was danceable’ after criticism of his earlier Romeo and Juliet ballet music.

All well and good but what about telling the actual story; this seems to have been forgotten about? Where in Act I is it made clear that there is actually a ball for anyone to go to? Cinderella – despite clearly mourning her real mother – doesn’t appear that downtrodden and there is nothing to be seen of her stepmother. There is very little magic in the transformation of the Fairy Godmother ‘in disguise’ as ‘a mysterious woman’ (Olga Sabadoch) into Mayara Magri as the actual Fairy Godmother (a woeful under-choregraphed role). Also, the resplendent coach drawn by four ‘mice’ simply just comes onto the stage. In Act II all the important entrances and exits are confined to a terrace in front of the grand palace and Cinderella losing her slipper when a large clock – another motif of the designs – gets lost itself in a melee at the end of the act. In the brief third act the ballet really ends when Cinderella and her Prince embrace but we must endure an epilogue (Prokofiev’s Amoroso). Ashton’s adds very little to the fairy tale ending that we have already seen, apart from allowing the happy couple to start ascending a long flight of stairs fading into the distance like a Wizard of Oz yellow brick road.

When I first saw Ashton’s Cinderella at Covent Garden in 1975 it was with Robert Helpmann and Ashton himself as the stepsisters; yes, I am that old! Then their jealous bickering was less music hall and more natural than it is now, and even that ridiculous business in the second act involving oranges of differing sizes was too. As I have written before, Helpmann and Ashton underplayed the roles, showing how less can mean more, something not understood by Avis and Ellis Somes and by Bennet Gartside and James Hay, clearly two men in drag – especially in their obvious Act III vests – looking like rejects form RuPaul’s Drag Race. Sadly, I found little to laugh at in the Stepsisters’ – almost interminable on this occasion – antics.

As in 2023 the ensemble dancing was meticulous and in keeping with the Ashton style we learnt so much about. Mayara Magri was her usual reliable self and Isabella Gasparini (Spring), Mariko M. Sasaki (Summer), Meaghan Grace Hinkis, (Autumn) and Claire Calvert (Winter) were an impressive Seasons quartet. Harris Bell and Liam Boswell were mildly amusing as the Stepsisters’ Act II ‘suitors’; one costumed as a tall Wellington, the other the shorter Napoleon. The Prince’s four friends (Leo Dixon, Harry Churches, Benjamin Ella, and Lukas Bjørneboe Brændsrød) efficiently partnered the four Seasons fairies. The best male role in the entire ballet is that of the Jester and the spring-heeled, smiley Daichi Ikarashi had some of the charisma and all the of the virtuosity Wayne Sleep brought to the role when I saw him dance it in 1975 and 1981. The kaleidoscopically-costumed Jester is over-present and rarely ceases his mercurial movement, leaping and spinning around the stage repetitively.

As for the two leading roles it was a matter of – using something recently said by Strictly’s Craig Revel Horwood – just step-step-lift-step-step-lift and any acting – and both Fumi Kaneko and William Bracewell had their moments – was confined to when they had nothing difficult to dance. It was then they could switch off from concentrating on their footwork, as Kaneko – always a serene and graceful dancer – most noticeably did when she was focussed intensely on all Cinderella’s en pointe work. Bracewell gets very little to do, nevertheless his Prince was suitably regal with his long-limbed dancing being clean, crisp and elegant. His partnering was tender and exemplary, however he lacked any real personality.

Jonathan Lo conducted the impeccable Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a fairly swift, more bittersweet and angst-ridden than romantic – Amoroso notwithstanding – account of Prokofiev’s score. It was composed nearly ten years after the composer’s 1935 Romeo and Juliet and just four years before Ashton choreographed his ballet. I conclude, finally, how since it now 2024, it is long overdue for The Royal Ballet to bring its audience some new choreography and a re-thought mise-en-scène not only for Cinderella but their oft-revived The Nutcracker which was having a year off this Christmas.

Jim Pritchard

Featured Image: William Bracewell (The Prince), Fumi Kaneko (Cinderella) with James Hay (l) and Bennet Gartside (r) as the Stepsisters © Andrej Uspenski

Production:
Choreography – Sir Frederick Ashton
Set designer – Tom Pye
Costume designer – Alexandra Byrne
Lighting designer – David Finn
Video designer – Finn Ross
Illusions – Chris Fisher
Staging – Wendy Ellis Somes, Gary Avis

Cast (included):
Cinderella – Fumi Kaneko
The Prince – William Bracewell
Cinderella’s Stepsisters – Bennet Gartside, James Hay
Cinderella’s Father – Thomas Whitehead
The Fairy Godmother – Mayara Magri
The Fairy Spring – Isabella Gasparini
The Fairy Summer – Mariko M. Sasaki
The Fairy Autumn – Meaghan Grace Hinkis
The Fairy Winter – Claire Calvert
The Jester – Daichi Ikarashi