I had seen Matthew Bourne's Cinderella twenty years ago when it opened, and was delighted to see it again. The choreography is riveting, a perfect match to the jaunty and evocative Prokofiev music. The dancers seemed at times to defy gravity and physiology, sometimes floating in air, sometimes bending at odd angles, other times bending fluidly as if they were a liquid being poured from one space to another. All of it served to wordlessly convey the characters in the story, from the creepy unctuousness of the step-brothers and the imperious evil of the step-mother, to the reticence turned blossoming of Cinderella and the desperation of the pilot after he’s lost her. The Cinderella story is of course well known, but it has been creatively re-set into London 1940, where Cinderella (who has step-brothers as well as step-sisters) meets a handsome RAF pilot and then they get separated in the confusion of the Blitz. The staging is fantastic, beautifully conjuring WWII London, complete with the sounds of bombers flying overhead and air raid sirens. The Act II ballroom scene is a marvelous showcase of dancing followed by a beautiful pas de deux between Cinderella and the pilot. The “angel” (the fairy godfather?) has some breathtaking moves. What a feast for the eyes and ears.
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