To 19th-century authors, Christmas presented the perfect opportunity for social commentary. A favourite theme was the contrast between wealth and poverty, between the firelit drawing rooms of the prosperous and the stark and frozen world beyond the silk curtains. For every fictional child such as Clara in The Nutcracker, with her presents and her party dresses, there was a ragged waif shivering on the pavement outside.
Nowhere is this pathos more excruciatingly brought to bear than in The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen. A child is wandering the streets barefoot in the snow, but she’s afraid to go home because she hasn’t sold enough matches and her father will beat her. As night falls she strikes her matches to keep warm and sees visions of the loving family life that fate has denied her. Finally, curling up beneath a street lamp, she succumbs to the piercing cold and is borne to heaven.
Adapting this story for the stage, as the choreographer and director Arthur Pita did in 2013, cannot have been easy. Poignancy is one thing; an auditorium full of sobbing parents and children quite another. That Pita succeeds not only in producing a joyous spectacle, but in leaving Andersen’s compassionate message intact, is testament to his theatrical deftness. Corey Claire Annand is as entrancing as she is touching in the title role, and the three-strong supporting cast of eccentric vagabonds are individually pitch-perfect.
Pita has coloured the piece with quirky humour and imaginative grace notes. The story is relocated to 19th-century Italy, and when our young heroine freezes to death (in a scene no less heart-rending than Andersen’s) she is transported to the moon. There, she attends the 1969 American landing, dances with an astronaut, and helps relaunch the lunar module with one of her matches.
Pita’s choreography for Annand is simple but telling, and she draws strong, articulate lines. The cast sing, too. The countertenor Angelo Smimmo is notably fine, while Annand has an engaging, canary-like chirrup. A live multi-instrumental soundtrack by composer Frank Moon provides haunting atmospherics. All in all, a delicate and charming work, which deserves to become a Christmas perennial.
• At the Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler’s Wells, London, until 24 December
