Cinders in Sunderland

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Birmingham Royal Ballet Cinderella Sunderland Empire 15 Mar 2025 14:00 

Between 6 Feb and 12 Apr 2025, the Birmingham Royal Ballet took Sir David Bintley's Cinderella on a nationwide tour.  I caught it at the Sunderland Empire on 15 March 2025.  I had already reviewed it in Bintley's Best on 2 Mar 2017.  I wrote in that article that I liked everything that I had seen of Bintley's work, but I thought Cinderella was the best.  That is still my view now. 

The reason I admire the ballet so much is that it tells the Grimm brothers' story (with a few variations) through Bintley's spectacular choreography to Prokofiev's beautiful music with John Macfarlane's sumptuous designs and David Finn's ingenious lighting. The Cinderella Relaxed Performance YouTube video is a good introduction to and overview of the ballet.   In Cinderella: An Interview with Sir David Bintley. Sir David confirms Mark Monahan's programme notes that Sir David agreed to create the ballet if Macfarlane agreed to do the designs. Monahan reports: "Lo and behold, John said yes."  Readers will recall that Macfarlane designed Liam Scarlett's Swan Lake, a recording of which I mentioned in Swan Lake at the Leeds Showcase on 30 May 2025.  The importance of those designs is explained in Cinderella: John Macfarlane's Designs.

In his programme notes, Mark Monahan observed that many choreographers had created versions of Cinderella, but it was Sir Frederick Ashton's for the Royal Ballet that "cast the longest shadow". It was important to Bintley that his company's Cinderella should be distinctive.  One important difference is that Bintley's stepsisters are danced by two young women, whereas Sir Frederick and Sir Robert Helpmann danced the stepsisters in the tradition of the English pantomime dame. As the stepsisters' video shows, those young women were quite beastly to Cinderella and, sometimes, even to each other. Ashton and Helpmann were absurd but far from menacing.  Bintley retained the fairy godmother, tradesmen and seasonal fairies (or at least the seasons) in his ballet, introducing also a frog coachman and lizard attendants.

Beatrice Parma danced the title role with flair and grace.  One of the most satisfying moments in the show is when she momentarily turned on her tormentors with a broom.  Others were, of course, her arrival at the ball, her duet with the prince, her producing the missing slipper and her final dance with the prince. Enrique Bejarano Vidal was an impressive prince with his sweeping lifts and powerful jumps.  Isabella Howard was a dazzling fairy godmother.  Having seen Oscar Kempsey-Fagg at An Evening with Ashton on 24 Jan 2023 in Elmhurst Ballet School, which I discussed in An "Evening with Ashton" and the Launch of an English Junior Company on 30 Jan 2023, it is good to see his progress in the company.

Sunderland has a beautiful Edwardian theatre capable of accommodating an audience of 2,200.  It was opened by Vesta Tilly in 1907.  It has a massive stage and excellent acoustics.  It is said to be haunted by the ghosts of Sid James and Vesta Tilly.  Neither spectre appeared on my visit.   Sunderland has a population of just over 277,000.  It used to be known for shipbuilding.  Nowadays, it is better known for making Nissan cars.   It has a university, a football club and beaches.