5 months ago
65
You tin spot wherefore Lynda Radley was wary astir taking connected Cinderella. How tin a playwright springiness bureau to a quality who is exploited by her household past swept distant by a handsome prince? One condition whitethorn beryllium preferable to the different but neither gives her a say. Radley’s solution is to supply Cinderella with immoderate welly – that is successful summation to the 2 wellies she spends overmuch of the play talking to.
Played with brightness and vigor by Hannah Visocchi, she is simply a hard-working husbandman concentrating connected her carrots portion her vacuous siblings Florence and Laurence (Leah Byrne and Adam Greene) forge careers arsenic wellbeing influencers.
Proud of her greenish fingers, she is initially dismissive of Liam (Jatinder Singh Randhawa), an biology engineering pupil with nary farming experience, but astatine the aforesaid clip she is unnerved by his superior cognition of ungraded chemistry. If she is going to prevention the household workplace from spot developer Apollo King (John Macaulay), she volition request lessons successful humility arsenic good arsenic independency of mind.
But successful Jemima Levick’s production, the communicative falls betwixt 2 stools. It has the ambitions of superior play but the quality of a pantomime. By rights, we should beryllium booing Ann Louise Ross arsenic the self-serving stepmother – the quality surely deserves it – but the code demands we clasp our peace. Likewise, we would laughter astatine Florence and Laurence if they were not presented arsenic conflicted characters connected the roadworthy to redemption.
Enlivened by Michael John McCarthy’s chamber-pop score, it is simply a cheerful show. But successful muting the extremes of the archetypal story, it reduces the urgency of Cinderella’s translation from innocence to adulthood without giving afloat value to the alternate communicative of onshore mismanagement and greed.
At Dundee Rep until 31 December
English (US) ·