Charm is not always a virtue in the theatre, but Stephen Sharkey's variation on the Cinderella story combines charm with such keen intelligence that the result is a really delightful piece of theatre, rough and crinkly around the edges but all melting heart at its centre.
This is neither a pantomime nor a children's show, but a piece of grown-up theatre. Sharkey transposes the story to 18th-century London and the reign of George III, who is not yet mad but in Rupert Bates's lovely performance just deliciously dotty. Ella Humbleton's mother dies shortly after giving birth to her only daughter. Daughter grows up with a negligent father who spends his time shooting tigers in India, but when he marries for money, Ella finds her comfortable life transformed. She is forced to become the kitchen skivvy for the social climbing Lady Augusta and her daughters by her previous marriage, Charlotte and Euphronia Snifflewick. Or the Snifflers as they are better known.
Sharkey has some particularly nice touches that, together with the neat script, lift this story above the ordinary. The Snifflewick girls are no ugly stepsisters - they are hideous only on the inside and the younger, Charlotte (delightfully played by Melissa Collier), shows some signs of redemption. There is no fairy godmother either: Ella's transformation is wrought not by magic but through her long dead mother, who is haunting the Humbleton residence. Then there is that carriage.
In this version the pumpkin becomes a hot-air balloon that transports Ella to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens where the king is giving a ball for his nephew, who is being forced to choose a wife. The rest is pretty much as you would both expect and desire, but the whole thing is executed in Erica Whyman's production with such flair that you can't help falling for it. All the performances are lovely but the production's trump card is Alison Pettitt's Ella, a tall, gawky girl with a smile so radiant she could melt an iceberg at a hundred paces. The prince falls for her, and so does every member of the audience.
Until January 20. Box office: 020-7620 3494.
