FringeReview UK 2025

Ballet Shoes

National Theatre, London

Genre: Adaptation, Comedic, Costume, Dance and Movement Theatre, Drama, Family, Feminist Theatre, LGBTQ, Mainstream Theatre, Puppetry, Theatre

Venue: National Theatre, London

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

No surprise this smash has returned after last year’s world premiere. Its wintry magic has proved not only hardy evergreen but more seamless. Kendall Feaver‘s adaptation of Ballet Shoes based on Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 novel brings heart and period realism to its gossamer-winged structure. And this version certainly lifts “we three Fossils”: director Katy Rudd has Petrova take off and fly over the front row. This production flies back into everyone’s hearts with the three adopted sisters and family of 999 Cromwell Road, playing at the Olivier till February 21. And everyone’s arms too. You’ll be asked to pirouette in your seats by cast-members. And there’s an even slicker feel: Rudd’s seamless direction takes on a new velocity over this two-hours-thirty-five.

The story of three (really four) accidental sisters adopted by an errant archaeologist with no time to manage them, is one of resolution and independence, making do in a cavernous house: a teeter between want and poverty. That’s after Sylvia (Garnie) Brown (Anoushka Lucas) is foisted on her last-known relative:  the man known later as GUM (Great-Uncle Matthew Brown), played with grand distracted gusto by Justin Salinger, returning to the role. He doubles as iron-hard but passionate Madame Fidolia, ex-ballerina turned dance teacher and mentor of the youngest Fossil.

Feaver‘s vision has proved a winner because its pitch, characterising and detail are outstanding. Costumes (Samuel Wyer) semaphore some storytelling, not least in degrees of poverty. The production’s on steroids till the three main characters settle. It’s a pity artistic illustrator Sylvia gets less development from Streatfeild, particularly in such an appealing performance as Lucas’s, displaying Sylvia’s shrouded sadness. Though Feaver’s lent her a handsome pay-off.

Feaver and Rudd still 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 (perhaps more light-dimmed this time). 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, arctic-blue and midnight at the same tme. 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 Matt Regan riffs on composer Asaf Zohar’s sinewy themes before the recorded arrangements by Gavin Sutherland take over – is that swing tune from 42^nd Street? 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 sustaining accidents in outrageous places and vanishes into that other role.  As Nana Alice Gutheridge (Lesley Nichol) fusses and subverts her own role (Nichol relishing her shifts in register from tutting-churchy to doting champion), the three Fossils emerge.

The eldest also adopts at five the self-identifying surname that works for all. That’s ship-orphaned Pauline Fossil (Nina Cassells) who smoulders, bosses, fights and slips resentfully into her great acting talent taken under the wing of a lodger: Doctor – of Literature – Jakes (Pandora Colin) whose own backstory is amplified here. Cassels brings out Pauline’s narcissistic streak and how it can blossom to co-operation, where all-round star Winifred (Gracie Hodson-Prior, who sings too with devastating saccharine) threatens to eclipse her.

Petrova Fossil (Sienna Arif-Knights, parodically angular, gracefully awkward and forthright) whose parents die in Russia is the next hauled back. She’s more obsessed with engines, cars, above all an ambition to fly. She does so, though her wider ambitions can only be realised at the end. With the slimmest storyline, effects make up for it. There’s an exquisite touch, the detail found everywhere, where taking dance classes, Arif-Knights extends her arms in flight. Petrova can fly on a wire (that spectacular effect as she somersaults above the front rows), or identify the car new lodger Jai Saran (an engagingly warm Raj Bajaj who soon notices Sylvia too) brings with him. That car’s the most elaborate prop used throughout, finally in a shiny avatar. Indeed it’s in keeping that it’s in a modernist Midsummer Night’s Dream – cast literally cast in shiny aluminium like the car – that Petrova gleams: with characters encased between a Ferdinand Léger painting and Peter Brook.

Posy Fossil (Scarlett Monahan) is not only the dancer – and she dances phenomenally to show how raw talent can finesse to brilliance – she brings a troupe with her. There’s initial teacher Miss Theodora “Theo” Dane. Returning to the role, Nadine Higgin’s again a mix of fun, rigour and aplomb with a poignant recognition of her limits, who gets opportunities to show a new world.

Choreographer Ellen Kane is key to this production, so literally on point. Three dancers flickering storytelling from the past earn separate applause: Young Juliette Manoff (Gabriela Rodriguez), The Prince (Eryck Brahmania) and with him Katerina Federovsky (Xolisweh Ana Richards, returning to the role) whose telegraphed tragic story flashes by in 40 seconds as her later avatar recalls her before another curtain. It’s a poignant take on what life does to dreams and talent.

Seamless ensemble/understudy cast are: Julie Armstrong, Rosie Boore, Chrissy Brooke, Luke Cinque-White, Stephanie Elstob, Sebastian Goffin, Georges Hann, Kaitlyn Moore, Anu Ogunmefun, Suzy Osad Chyi, Katie Singh – who like Hann was in the ensemble last year.

A winter paean to wonder and possibility, Feaver’s and Rudd’s Ballet Shoes has proved as evergreen as the book itself. Outstanding.

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

Casting Director Bryony Jarvis-Taylor CDG and Martin Poile CDG, Classical Coach Cira Robinson, Dialect Coach Penny Dyer, Voice Coaches Cathleen McCarron and Zoe Littleton, Fight Director Haruka Kuroda, Associate Choreographer Luke Cinque-White, Associate Lighting Designer Imogen Clarke, Associate Sound Designer Jonas Roebuck, Associate Video Designer Hayley Egan, Associate Illusions Sam Lupton, Digital Art Daniel Radley-Bennett, Singing Coach Hazel Holder, Performer Flying John Maddox for Suspended Illusions.

Staff Director Jasmine Teo, Producer Harriet Mackie, Production Manager Tabitha Piggott, Dramaturg Nina Steiger, Company Manager Jo Phipps, Stage Manager Robert Perkins, DSM Emma Rangel, ASMs Sophie Ellie Leaver, Honor Ramsdale, Benedict Rattray.

Published December 4, 2025 by Simon Jenner