Review: Cinderella. 'This Lovely, Lovely Night'

But I mean how am I supposed to write a review of a musical? The genre is pretty much antithetical to theatre critics. Musicals are usually dedicated to providing a big fun entertaining show over creating a profound work of art (and I hate fun), by definition involve songs (scary! Not within my remit! I’m not a music critic!), and worst of all have huge casts and crews, so I can’t possibly mention everyone and will therefore, in this town, invariably offend someone.

ID: Ian Crews as Topher and Hanna Ward as Cinderella kissing at the ball. Credit: Emilia Bozza.

So I could for instance say that I’ve been fond of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s short 1957 TV musical Cinderella for a while—it’s a remarkable show not only for its place in TV history, but also for its subtly brilliant reshaping of the Cinderella story into a celebration of imagination and dreaming and taking the initiative to change your life (wow! Sounds basic but it’s really good I promise)—but that this 2013 new book by Douglas Carter Beane called Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella is quite a different beast. It changes the plot towards panto-esque medieval fantasy, makes one of the sisters completely unobjectionable, and clutters it with a really offensively rudimentarily Liberal subplot about introducing pseudo-democracy to help the poor (true to life insofar as the election is between someone objectively evil and someone slightly ineffectual—but what is the actual benefit of it all!? Have a proper revolution). In my opinion this movement towards panto (though proving correct my longstanding belief that the arc of the entertainment universe is long, but bends towards pantomime) creates a slight dissonance between the often subtle emotional expression of the amazing songs, and the fine but objectively American jokes of the rest of the show. This doesn’t make it bad, only different—to quote one of its greatest lines quietly exposing the instability of identity: ‘Have we met before? / Yes, and we are seeing each other for the first time right now’. Unfortunately in no version of this musical does this instability of possible identities ever extend to not being straight—but it’s a musical so does it count as a little gay regardless?

ID: Callum Wardman-Browne and Ian Crews. Credit: Louise Anderbjörk.

But all this analysis is really besides the point. This MusT production directed by Matthew Colquhoun and produced by Jaden Jones with vocal direction by Ruby Thake is easily the most lavish and entertaining show I’ve seen here at St Andrews; it is extremely good fun executed to a high level I hadn’t thought possible from student theatre. Outrageously it has not sold out all its tickets; you should go buy one now. 

The show starts with an overture to show off the huge and consistently excellent orchestra, who never seem to falter and who bring everything to life—congratulations to all the musicians, congratulations to Orchestral Director Joe Atkinson, and congratulations to Sound Tech Iain Cunningham for mixing it all to sound completely exquisite where I was precisely in the middle of the audience (goodbye to Reviewers’ Corner! I am enjoying this new luxury).

Then the curtain rises and you see something almost unheard of: a backdrop! –An extremely beautiful forest backdrop pleasingly reminiscent of Chinese ink wash painting, and behind it the palace, complete with a balcony to run along, courtesy of Cal O’Neill and Jessica MacPherson. The many set pieces, including reversible screens to form a cottage, and a fully 3D tree and a well, are incredibly impressive, and are impressively efficiently brought on for the huge number of seamless scene changes in the show (my chance to name the stage management team Alex Mackie, David Cantor, and Caitie Steele).

The musical proper starts: Ian Crews’ Prince Topher, with his extremely supportive guards dancing in sync, is in the forest lit up in green, with flashes of white light shooting down. They settle down, the colours change, foliage is projected onto the backdrop, and Topher sings about how he is profoundly insecure despite his dragon-slaying abilities: a massive dragon appears silhouetted, Topher takes aim with a crossbow and fires, producing a red spinning dying dragon spotlight and a beautifully weighty dying dragon thud (Cerys Thornton on SFX). If you are me you begin to silently scream, as you realise Lucy Turner’s lighting design is completely insane, impossible to adequately note down or recreate here, and exceptional and extravagantly over the top. She is dedicated to finding and using every possible way of lighting a forest or indeed anywhere else; every scene is fresh; the lighting changes to reflect every movement and emotional progression; and it dances along to the music, bringing life and energy into each song and making it into its own entirely individual moment of magic. The only slight shame is when every so often the actors (in their feeble human inconsistency) fail to stand in the right place, and you are jarred out of watching the lightshow into remembering this is a musical and other things are going on.

ID: Bella Yow and Hanna Ward. Credit: Louise Anderbjörk.

What is also exceptional and extravagantly over the top is the costume design, led by Kate Nolting with Dressmaker Valentine Salinger, and Elisa Toucas and Eva Lewis. Everything is beautiful and perfectly chosen. There are three quick changes in the various transformation sequences, and all are executed impressively perfectly. Bella Yow’s variously scurrying, variously bouncing Crazy Marie spins off her cloak covered in leaves to reveal a beautiful fairy godmother dress underneath. Hanna Ward’s Cinderella, mild-mannered (but assertive when ballroom dancing around the barely-moving prince and trying to get him to kiss her) and with an incredible voice, spins down her apron outfit to reveal a beautiful blue dress, and later spins off a green dress to reveal one covered with gold leaves underneath. Bottom’s horse hat from A Midsummer Night’s Dream also makes a reappearance, and the pumpkin carriage is made out of wheelchairs. What more could you wish for?

ID: Clara Curtis, Hanna Ward, Madeleine Wilton, and Emma Koonce. Credit: Louise Anderbjörk.

We reach the all-important masked ball and the ensemble are all wearing shiny mono-coloured dresses, and you wonder again how just four people could have put all these costumes together, while Prince Topher is in a light blue gold-trimmed jacket with lobsters on it (probably because he has terrible taste, but I really want it. My heart burns for a light blue gold-trimmed jacket with the ugliest sleeves anyone has ever constructed, and lobsters on it). Madeleine Wilton’s evil stepmother Madame is in an impressively garish red and green and purple dress. She is full of outraged sensibilities and little scene-stealing moments; she is the comic centre of the show alongside Callum Wardman-Browne’s corrupt vizier Sebastian, who actually comes across quite sympathetically in his completely honest and open exploitation of others. To take the Prince’s eyes away from Cinderella he introduces the game of Ridicule, in which courtiers compete to ridicule (wow!) each other, but to his horror she infects everyone with her kind compliments instead and makes everyone happy.

If my little knitted gnome babies were watching a children’s TV show and it had messaging this utterly insipid, I would turn it off, file a complaint, rip open their heads, and restuff them in order to eradicate any possible contamination from it in their perfectly pure ethical cotton brains; Sebastian's Ridicule embodies ‘sophisticated cruelty’, which is pretty much all I aspire to as a critic, so I interpret this as a personal attack—is what I would say if I was fully in theatre reviewer mode, but I’m not so I won’t. I was sleep-deprived enough to really enjoy this—and besides, the magic of live theatre can do wonders for any absurd plot point.

 

ID: 'The Prince is giving a ball!' Credit: Louise Anderbjörk.

Lara Buchanan is the Prince’s lieutenant/town crier Pinkleton, in a big smart red coat, a winning smile, smooth officious movements, and an amazing voice. Up against her to try to capture the attention of the peasantry and make them aware of their social condition is Struan Barker’s awkward and stumbling supposed revolutionary Jean-Michel, who reaches for ever new and higher levels of tremulousness (in fact he achieves the platonic ideal of it when awkwardly joking that Cinderella should go to the ball). Jean-Michel is in straight love with Cinderella’s charmingly naive and nice stepsister Gabrielle, played by Clara Curtis, who gets all of the prettiest outfits in the entire show and has a possibly show-stealing stagger and kiss with him. Emma Koonce’s other stepsister Charlotte is supposedly less conventionally attractive, and is therefore evil—but one of the advantages of being evil is getting your own fun musical number and with a fun and different dance.

This is a massive production with a massive cast and a massive crew and I am staggered at how well it all came together. It is now long past midnight; the arms moving like clock hands in the waltz and the flashing blue lights signalling Cinderella to leave are both long gone and so is the magic of my pen (keyboard), but the magic of this production will magically return for another two more nights. So go see it if you haven’t or if you have! This may be the greatest spectacle to be put on in this town for a long time.

X

other erin