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The appearance in London must also be a kind of personal test for Ashley Page. For many years he was with the Royal Ballet and choreographed many new works or them for the main stage of Covent Garden. Most of these works in the 1990s, with the exception of Fearful Symmetries, received a rather glum reaction from most critics and audiences. Typically these were extravagantly designed (I recall moving scenery and furniture that burst into flames) and dark in tone, without much obvious narrative content apart from oblique hints of unpleasantness. No one then would accuse him of being a crowd pleaser.

So how has he succeeded in producing a three act narrative ballet based on a fairy tale ? It is a very handsome production, extravagantly designed and costumed by Antony MacDonald in a style which acknowledges Vivienne Westwood, the 18th century and the Simpsons (for the women’s wigs) more or less in that order. It looks wonderful and there are some charming production details. Cinderella’s pumpkin turns into a hot air balloon. However when you leave and the thing that remains uppermost in your mind is the glorious designs rather than the dancing or the characters then maybe the balance in the production isn’t quite right. The company were dancing strongly and there were fine individual performances but this was a glitzy and glittering rather than warm and engaging production. It is clever rather than loveable.

Page’s instinctive attraction to the darker aspects of the story makes him paint – all too successfully – the stepmother and stepsisters as so heartless and so outrageously cruel that they have a cartoon like quality. They toss the portrait of Cinderella’s mother into the fire, they throw her ashes to the floor and daub these on Cinderella’s cheeks. It’s way over the top but these characters have a manic energy which makes Cinderella little pallid. We should be more sorry for her and yet we aren’t somehow. It’s all so over-pitched as a spectacle that it doesn’t seem real enough to engage the heart. The dirty crockery piled some 20 feet high that Cinderella is supposed to wash if funny but so obviously unreal.

Eve Mutso as the Stepmother appears to be playing Joan Collins at the height of her Dynasty period, heaving cleavage, pouting sulks and all. The stepsisters are rather more on one note and not sharply delineated individually – they seem to be types rather than actual people. They don’t get as many laughs as they might out of their hideousness – it’s the men, who deliver the humour most effectively. Particular honours here go to Paul Liburd as the dancing master, resplendent in a leopard skin print coat lined with shocking pink satin, who enlivened every scene he was in.
 

In Page’s take on the story, the godmother is intended to be the ghost of Cinderella’s mother. (Though you might miss this inference. A number of narrative points are quite so clear as they might be. Any warning to Cinderella to return from the ball before midnight completely failed to register). The godmother (Soon Ja Lee) gets one of the loveliest of the costumes and a generous share of Page’s more classical steps. The sequence for the season fairies was particularly successful. Page’s angular, aggressive style was particularly well suited to his Autumn (Martina Forioso) who attacked her stormy solo with energy and force.

Cinderella is duly delivered to the ball and meets her Prince (Erik Cavallari). Both are strong dancers and delivered their solos well. They seemed more impressive dancing apart than together, which doesn’t seem right for this particular story. I think the issue lies more in Page’s steps than with the performers. In their ballroom pas de deux he repeatedly whisks them off stage rather than allowing us to watch their attraction building. And that attraction seems applied by the dancers from the outside, rather than being essentially implied in the steps themselves. I would very much like to see these two in other roles.

The ending of the work is downbeat and baffling: Cinderella and her prince have been reunited, but the last image is of the father, stepmother and stepsisters shuffling across the stage. The programme explains that the stepsisters have had their eyes pecked out by birds because of their cruelty, though how anyone who doesn’t buy a programme is intended to know this isn’t clear. Though Page has made a work which is lively, colourful and has its crowd pleasing moments, he chooses to end on a rather bleak note.

It’s not a bleak outcome for Scottish Ballet though. The dancers looked strong and confident, a much more polished and convincing display than that 1999 visit. Some of them looked like they might be more at home in rather more strenuous modern dance works and there will be an opportunity to see this in their triple bill on Thursday 16th at Sadler’s, and again in April in Edinburgh and Glasgow.