Browse reviews

FringeReview UK 2024


Low Down

Kendall Feaver‘s adaptation of Ballet Shoes based on the 1936 novel by Noel Streatfeild brings heart and grainy realism to its fairy-tale structure. And this version lifts “we three Fossils” quite literally: as director Katy Rudd has Petrova take off and fly over the front row. It’s quite clear this production will fly into everyone’s hearts with the three adopted sisters and assorted family of 999 Cromwell Road, and does so at the Olivier till February 22nd.

If not the most rapturously sucker-punch of tales, it’s a paean to wonder and possibility, dreaming to some purpose. Like other winter growths, this should prove a hardy perennial, evergreen as the book.

 

Review

There’s been spectacular festive productions in the Olivier recently, but Kendall Feaver‘s adaptation of Ballet Shoes based on the 1936 novel by Noel Streatfeild brings heart and grainy realism to its fairy-tale structure. And this version lifts “we three Fossils” quite literally: as director Katy Rudd has Petrova take off and fly over the front row. It’s quite clear this production will fly into everyone’s hearts with the three adopted sisters and assorted family of 999 Cromwell Road, and does so at the Olivier till February 22nd.

The story of three (really four) accidental sisters adopted by a roving archaeologist with no time to manage them, is one of lots of resolution and independence, making do in a large house: so a delicate balance between want and real poverty. That’s after Sylvia (Garnie) Brown (Pearl Mackie) is foisted on her last-known relative:  the man known later as GUM (Great-Uncle Matthew Brown), played by Justin Salinger, then seamlessly Philip Labey after the interval when Salinger became ill. Both actors double as Madame Fidolia, the ex-ballerina turned dance teacher and mentor of the youngest Fossil.

In  pitch, variety and detail, there’s a grip and characterising here that marks it out. Costumes (Samuel Wyer) semaphore some of the storytelling, not least in degree of poverty. The production’s particularly active till the three main characters settle down. One feels sorry artistic illustrator Sylvia gets less development from Streatfeild, particularly in such an appealing, downright performance as Mackie’s, but Feaver’s lent her a handsome pay-off here.

Feaver and Rudd sweep everything in a storytelling fluidity that takes in Frankie Bradshaw’s set towering with a gallery behind and GUM’s bewitching glass-cabineted fossils, rearing up and crossing above. And they move. That’s Ash J Woodward’s video design that projects magically, rippling an ocean on a canvas sheet, props that float across the set. It’s mesmerisingly synched with Paule Constable’s lighting. At one moment a solidity of bedroom or bathroom, at another a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party as Pauline’s temper means she might miss out on being Alice.

Pianist Nuwan Hugh Perera riffs on composer Asaf Zohar’s sinewy themes before the recorded arrangements by Gavin Sutherland take over. There’s wit too, as Saint-Saens ‘Dance of the Fossils’ from his Carnival of the Animals pirouettes on a xylophone.

GUM rears up like a Victorian dinosaur himself, pops up in accidents in outrageous places and disappears into that other role.  As Nana Alice Gutheridge (Jenny Galloway) fusses and subverts her own role (Galloway relishing her shifts in register), the three Fossils emerge.

The eldest also adopted at five the self-identifying surname that works for all. That’s ship-orphaned Pauline Fossil (Grace Saif) who smoulders, bosses, fights and slips resentfully into her great acting talent taken under the wing of a lodger: Doctor – of Literature – Jakes (Helena Lymbery) whose own backstory is amplified here.

Saif’s Pauline is a study in tempering resentment and declaring dependence on others, as does Posy. Pauline’s biggest challenge is co-operation, where all-round star Winifred (Sonya Cullingford, who sings too with devastating saccharine) threatens to eclipse her.

Petrova Fossil (Yanexi Enriquez, comically angular, gracefully awkward and forthright) whose parents die in Russia is the next hauled back, un-artistic, obsessed with engines, cars and above all an ambition to fly. She does so, though her wider ambitions can only be realised at the end. There’s an exquisite touch, the detail found everywhere, where taking dance classes, Enriquez extends her arms in flight. It’s in keeping Petrova can fly on a wire, or identify the car the new lodger Kai Saran (an engagingly warm Sid Sagar who soon notices Sylvia too) brings with him.. That car’s the most elaborate prop used throughout, finally in a shiny avatar.

Posy Fossil (Daisy Sequerra) is not only the dancer – and she dances to show how raw talent overreach can finesse to brilliance – she brings a troupe with her. There’s initial teacher Miss Theodora “Theo” Dane. Nadine Higgin’s a mixture of fun, rigour and aplomb with a sad recognition of her limits who gratifyingly gets several opportunities to show a new world.

Choreographer Ellen Kane is key to this production, so literally on point. Three dancers from the past in some flickering storytelling earn separate applause: Young Juliette Manoff (Cordelia Braithwaite), The Prince (George Hann) and with him Katerina Federovsky (Xolisweh Ana Richards) whose telegraphed tragic story flashes by in 40 seconds as her later avatar recalls her before another curtain.

This performance with Labey taking up GUM underscores how seamless and essential ensemble/understudy cast are; the remaining ones being: Stacy Abalogun, Eryck Brahmania, Michelle Cornelius, Courtney George, Sharol Mackenzie, Katie Singh.

If not the most rapturously sucker-punch of tales, it’s a paean to wonder and possibility, dreaming to some purpose. Like other winter growths, this should prove a hardy perennial, evergreen as the book.

 

 

Dance Arrangements and Orchestration Gavin SutherlandSound Designer Ian Dickinson for Autograph, Illusions Chris Fisher

Casting Director Bryony Jarvis-Taylor, Classical Coach Cira Robinson, Dialect Coach Penny Dyer, Voice Coaches Cathleen McCarron and Tamsin Newlands,

Associate Set Designer Natalie Johnson, Associate Choreographer Jonathan Goddard, Swing Consultant Eddie Slattery, Fight Director Haruka Kuroda, Staff Director Aaliyah McKay

Producer Harriet Macke, Production Manager Heather Doole, Dramaturg Stewart Pringle, CSM Laura Draper, DSM Emily Porter, ASMs Sophie Alice Cooper and Wen-Haing-Chiang

Published