Charles Way's version of this old, old tale is relocated to Mannheim in Germany in 1717 and is shot through with music. There is the music of Mozart, who appears in the story as the Prince's comic friend, the happily mad composer Wolfie, and there is also the music of love, the music of language and the music of friendship. Notes run like a ribbon around the stage (Alex Bunn's effective and elegant design) and one of the messages of the evening is that to be happy you must learn to listen: to others and to your own heart.
Way - who has become a far more psychologically interesting writer in recent years, with a succession of shows including the superb Red, Red Shoes - has a fresh take on the familiar story. Instead of being the butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth, heavily put-upon archetypal heroine, this Cinderella (beautifully played by Elisa de Grey) is a bolshie teenager clearly emotionally damaged by the premature death of her mother.
Similarly, her stepsisters Constanze and Aloysia are suffering not just materially but also emotionally following the death of their father. In the circumstances, Cinderella's stepmother is less the wicked woman of legend and more a well-meaning but misguided woman coping with a household full of hormonal and distressed teenagers. Even the way she favours her own girls rings completely true, as does the way she has raised them to be competitively accomplished. One imagines Constanze and Aloysia were the original over-scheduled middle-class children.
This emphasis on family and sibling and step-sibling relationships gives the production real emotional ballast and also makes it seem strikingly modern. Even Constanze and Aloysia's attempts at self-mutilation in an attempt to make their feet fit the slipper make perfect sense in the context of adolescents attempting to please their over-demanding mother, who expects them to excel and always be the best.
If this makes it all sound rather heavy, it isn't in the slightest. Like all good theatre, it works on many levels and is elastic enough to mean different things to different parts of the audience, old and young, parent and child. It is pretty enough to appeal to small girls, deep enough to appeal to their elder sisters and is certainly never so soppy that it will turn off the boys, who tend to go to Cinderella under duress. That is some achievement.
· Until January 25. Box office: 020-8543 4888.
