‘I didn’t promise you this would be an entirely happy story,” says narrator Ishan Ramdas (Ronny Jhutti) at the start of act two. He is not kidding. Just before the interval, we have lost one of the most sympathetic characters and seen the star of the show become an orphan.
The novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a reverse Cinderella tale of riches to rags and it has to get dark before it gets light again. Seven-year-old Sara Crewe (Genevieve Sabherwal) journeys from home in India to boarding school in a chilly UK. She never lets her wealth get in the way of her humanity – especially in Sabherwal’s wholesome performance – but when things take a turn for the worse, even she has lessons in humility to learn.
The story has a Dickensian sense of injustice, intensified here by adaptor Amanda Dalton who moves the story forward three decades to 1930, a time when India was trying to throw off its colonial past and Mahatma Gandhi was campaigning against Britain’s restrictive economic practices. The institutional prejudice of Miss Minchin’s Academy for Young Ladies, where staff and pupils look down on their social inferiors, mirrors the values of a collapsing empire.
Hearing the news of Indian insurrection, Amelia Minchin (Victoria Brazier in a splendid sisterly double act with Meriel Scholfield) claims the protesters have no respect for authority. “It’s more complicated than that,” counters the wise Sara.
Being so rooted in the subcontinent also gives Liz Stevenson’s nourishing production much of its texture. Designer Amanda Stoodley contrasts the colourful fabrics of India with the wood-panelled gloominess of the UK. There are mythical puppet visitors – rat, magpie and cat – and in Sara’s Indian fables, a sense of the restorative power of story.
Like Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, A Little Princess is about a child bringing new life to a wintery adult world. Sara’s inner life has a vibrancy unmatched by the buttoned-up austerity of the school (a full classroom thanks to a sharply drilled youth cast). Her imagination terrifies her nemesis Lavinia (Tori Burgess), whose bravado is a front for small-mindedness, but it captivates her other new friends. With its spirit of empowerment and belief that “unity is strength,” it is a rich and rewarding show.
• At Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, until 7 January
