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Chelsea Ballet Company Cinderella Chelmsford Theatre 17 March 2023 19:30
Chelmsford is a community about the size of Huddersfield and the same distance from London as Huddersfield is from Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield. Although Chelmsford has been a city for many years in the ecclesiastical sense as it has a cathedral it was elevated to city status in the municipal sense in 2012 to celebrate the late Queen's diamond jubilee. While Huddersfield is renowned for its choral society Chelmsford has an institution that is at least as precious, namely the Chelmsford Ballet Company.
Chelmsford Ballet Company is a company of artists who live and work or study in and around Chelmsford. Although some of its members have made a career in dance - including one of my dear teachers at Northern Ballet Cara O'Shea - many do not. I shall not call those artists "amateurs" because that description has connotations of aspiration rather than achievement. In the quality of its productions and the enjoyment that its audiences experience the Chelmsford Ballet stands comparison with many companies of full-time dancers.
Every March the company stages a full-length ballet or mixed bill in Chelmsford's Civic Theatre. This year it presented its own version of Cinderella. The score was by Glazunov and not Prokofiev and the choreography was by the company's artistic director Annette Potter with the important contribution of a pas de trois for Cinderella, her prince and his footman from one of my longstanding, favourite choreographers Christopher Marney. One of the company's strengths is the quality of its sets, costumes, lighting and special effects. Annette Potter designed the sets, Ann Starlings the costumes and Alana Holland the lighting. This year we were treated to indoor pyrotechnics when the Fairy Godmother cast off her cloak to reveal a dazzling tutu, Cinderella set off for the ball and at the finale. I do not know who takes credit for those fireworks but they were spectacular.
Another strength of the Chelmsford Ballet is that it finds a role for as many of its members as possible. These include the children who performed as mice and the adults who danced as fairy godmother's assistants, seamstresses, ladies of the court, court dancers, the hours of the clock and guests at the wedding. All of those performers danced well and all deserve congratulations but if I gave each and every one of them her due in this review it would resemble a telephone directory.
The lead roles were, of course, the prince danced by Nicola Marchionni and Cinderella danced by Isabelle Fellows. They performed their roles with fluency and flair. They impressed me particularly in their first duet with movements that required considerable virtuosity and more than a little daring. They communicated ecstasy to the audience. Appreciating the difficulty I applauded them specifically for that sequence. I have no idea whether they could have heard clapping from row "O" but they know about it now.
The other important female characters were the fairy godmother danced elegantly by Samatha Ellis and the step sisters Alycia Potter and Georgia Olley. The sisters were my favourites and I can assure readers that there is nothing "ugly" about either of them in real life. I was able to congratulate one of them on the way out of the theatre when I deposited a somewhat larger contribution to the company's charity than I would otherwise have made. It is very difficult to clown in ballet and they showed their virtuosity in the dancing lesson by collapsing into splits. I was reminded of Paddington Bear at Her Majesty's platinum jubilee when one of the sisters took the teapot and poured its contents down her throat from the spout.
The three other males were Neil Harget who was Cinders's long-suffering dad, Alexander Evans who was the tailor and pageboy and James Fletcher who also performed several roles including Marney's pas de trois with Marchioni and Fellows. All were impressive but I have to give special praise to Evans. He is still very young but I am sure he will go far. He has stage presence in spades. I was particularly amused by his chutzpah as he extracted the last wad of banknotes from a father on his way to Carey Street.
Cinderella continues at the Civic for one more day and if you can make it to Chelmsford either for the matinee or the evening show you will be amply rewarded.
