It’s not your Disney version, this. In fact, BalletLorent’s production has less in common with a sweet-singing Rachel Zegler, more with Demi Moore in The Substance. And it reminds you that, in the version originally collected by the Brothers Grimm at least, Snow White is hardly a kids’ story, what with all the attempted murder and juicy cannibalism.
So choreographer Liv Lorent offers up two versions: a family show for all ages, and an “after dark” version for audiences of 16 and over, which is the more successful. There is actually not so much difference between the two though. The adult version is sexier, fleshier, a bit more on the nose, a shade more violent (not least in the scene of a smarting bikini wax). But even the family version may not be for younger kids, and it perhaps speaks less directly to them than to the middle-aged women in the audience, since it’s the horror story of a once beautiful woman seeing her currency crash.
In some tellings, the queen dies in childbirth and it’s a wicked stepmother who has a vendetta against Snow White’s youthful beauty. In this one, using Carol Ann Duffy’s knowing rewrite, as in the Grimms’ 1812 version, it’s Snow White’s own mother who is out to get her, which makes the whole thing darker still.
The Queen (Caroline Reece) gazes into her mirror, intoxicated by her reflection, and teaches Snow White (Virginia Scudeletti) the importance of looking “gorgeous at all times”. There are rich themes: vanity, jealousy, rejection, loneliness, with all the drama magnified by Doctor Who composer Murray Gold’s huge score which soars and swells and galvanises, while Lorent’s small company loop and swoop to match the surging music.
There’s a great set, cleverly designed by Phil Eddolls, based on a giant dressing table which swings around to turn into a forest, and the mirror, embodied by the sharply angular moves of dancer Aisha Naamani enrobed in metallic silver. Instead of dwarves we have a clan of miners, and a nice juxtaposition of them doing the backbreaking work of digging for jewels while Snow White and her mother do the hard graft of beautification with all its undignified scrubbing and depilation.
It’s an odd story really, the huntsman dancing with Snow White’s seemingly dead body, kissing her cold lips. (Liberties! Consent!) But particular moments reveal Lorent’s excellent dramatic instincts, such as when the huntsman kills a young doe to take its heart back to the queen (in place of Snow White’s), and we see the mother deer distraught in a reverse of the main plot. Or at the end when the disgraced queen stands stock-still for a whole scene, looking like an empty shell while youthful nuptial joy abounds around her – so much more effective than any histrionics.
It may be a centuries-old tale playing on the classic fairytale fear of the solitary old woman, but anxiety around ageing is as current as can be. The queen sends an out-of-date portrait to her potential suitor, just like you’d put your most flattering photos on Tinder (and then the man chooses the younger woman anyway). She’s a monster, but a weirdly relatable one.
• Snow White (family version) is touring until 31 May. Snow White: The Sacrifice is touring until 30 May
