Shy Sebastian, the lyric describing him makes prince rhyme with wince, has to marry and goes from being the least sought after man to boyfriend material.  His childhood friend is Cinderella (Carrie Hope Fletcher) a girl who defies the cult of beauty in favour of Goth, dark straggly hair, black lipstick and dark clothes with grey net skirt imitating cobwebs, black lace wrist cuffs and Doc Martens.  I rather liked her style and was pleased to see at least one audience member copying her. 

Cinderella lives with her stepmother (Victoria Hamilton-Barritt), think Cruella de Ville without the blonde hair streak meets Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, long cigarette holder and a very deep, throaty voice honed with years of cigarettes. The two stepsisters Adele (Laura Baldwin) and Marie (Georgina Castle) are a pair of air heads whose first song is to whine “Unfair, unfair”.  Both are blonde, Adele with pink streaks and Marie with a green swathe and heavily into pink, frilly clothes.  Their mother describes one as imbecilic and the other as being only half as bright!

I found the Belleville residents lacking in interest, doll like girls in rose, apricot and Elastoplast pink frocks and the men, the knights so self absorbed with getting muscles at the gym, that they haven’t developed their brains.  The other problem is that the topless knights’ choreography is all machismo and fight dance, nothing like as attractive as the Magic Mike dancers, whose dance is original.  But then they are not meant to be attractive but figures of fun. 

Cinderella and Sebastian sing of their friendship in the pretty ballad “Only You, Lonely You”. The Queen and the Stepmother discover that they have a joint past in the Pigalle, the red light district of Paris in the song “I Know You”.  These two provide much of the show’s comedy.  The sisters get ready for the ball and leave Cinderella at home. 

The Godmother, more Mafia Godmother than Fairy Godmother (Gloria Onitiri) takes Cinderella in hand and organises a full makeover.  Her shop and beauty lab has a circle of pale mannequins who eerily come to life. Godmother says she’s an artist but she is scary.  The extreme procedure involves surgery as well as new clothes and hair and the shoes are agony but covered in crystals.   They might as well be full of crystals as Cinderella cannot walk in heels and she is the only Belleville woman who can’t. 

So to Act Two and the ball uses the revolve that many will remember from the first production of Cats at this theatre. The issue is that Sebastian is waiting for Cinderella at the ball but fails to recognise her.