Cinderella, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, review: Romantic production combines glamour and liveliness

Scottish Ballet’s new Cinderella goes to the ball in a rose-scented whirl. Christopher Hampson’s romantic new production combines glamour and liveliness, with an enchanting ballroom scene.

Hampson, Scottish Ballet’s artistic director since 2012, created this Cinderella for Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2007. Danced to Sergei Prokofiev’s score, it has a nice balance between family comedy and dreamy fantasy. Tracy Grant Lord’s art nouveau designs bring the two sides together.

The ballet starts with the funeral of Cinderella’s mother, her lonely daughter planting a rose at the grave. It becomes the motif of this staging, blooming into swirling curlicues and trailing blossom, becoming the backdrop for the ballet’s scenes of magic. There’s a corps de ballet of roses, and it’s a rose, as much as a dropped slipper, that reunite this Cinders with her prince.

Hampson’s first act has his weakest storytelling. Bethany Kingsley-Garner’s Cinderella is pretty as a picture, but she isn’t given much space for pathos. There’s too much rushing about, too many threats to the portrait of her mother. The stepmother and sisters, all danced by women, are spiteful rather than grotesque, with repetitive early material.

Instead of season fairies, Hampson weaves everyday characters into the magic scenes. Jamiel Laurence’s high-handed dancing master reappears as a grasshopper, assistant to Araminta Wraith’s gracious fairy godmother. The tailors reappear to create Cinderella’s ball dress. It’s a deft use of a mid-sized company’s forces, giving soloists bigger roles to get their teeth into.

The second act brings both romance and comedy into focus. After a glimpse of footmen polishing the chandeliers, the drop curtain rises on a glittering party. There’s ballroom elegance to the courtiers’ long gloves and chignons, and even more in their swirling dances. Hampson catches the giddiness of Prokofiev’s waltzes, lyrical with a spiky undertow. Jean-Claude Picard conducts a terrific performance: the orchestral sound is luscious, without losing the score’s needle-sharp edges.

Cinderella’s awful family come into their own at the ball, too. As the sisters, established principals Sophie Martin and Eve Mutso get into tangles that are more human than slapstick. Martin’s short sister is sweetly goofy, proud of her solo even as it comes unstuck, dancing with witty musical timing. Mutso’s tall sister is an imperious monster. Sweeping her long limbs with commanding fury, she’s chic even as she pratfalls.

Kingsley-Garner sparkles in the ballroom, scene, with a clean jump and brisk footwork in Hampson’s classical steps. Christopher Harrison is an energetic prince, but needs sharper timing to clinch the bravura moves. The search for the slipper is fast and clever, with the prince rushing past a chorus line of disembodied legs.

Back at home, Kingsley-Garner shows a stronger sense of Cinderella’s fears and sorrows, as she tries to hide her slipper from Sophie Laplane’s vengeful Stepmother. Hampson and Lord’s rose imagery comes together in an appealing finale, the ballet’s magical and everyday worlds reunited in a shower of petals.

Until 31 December. Box office 0131 529 6000. Touring until 30 January. Tour dates from www.scottishballet.co.uk