Are you looking for something fuzzy to warm your heart this Christmastime? Then boy does the National Theatre have the show for you.
Kate Rudd’s seamless production is adapted by playwright Kendall Feaver from the Noel Streatfeild children’s novel of the same name. It follows the story of the three Fossil sisters: Pauline (Nina Casselis), Petrova (Sienna Arif-Knights) and Posy (Scarlett Monahan) who are adopted by the eccentric explorer and palaeontologist Great Uncle Matthew, aka Gum (Justin Salinger). After Gum goes missing on one of his many, many expeditions, the girls are looked after by his steadfastly loyal niece Sylvia, aka Garnie (Anoushka Lucas) and the matronly Miss Guthridge, aka Nana, played by the charming Lesley Nicol with a drawling West Country accent.
Set in the 1930s, the five women live in a tumbledown house filled with fossils on the Cromwell Road in Chelsea, until they realise they are desperately running out of money and assemble a motley crew of lodgers to take up rooms. There’s the stern but kind-hearted English professor Doctor Jakes (Pandora Colin), glamorous dance teacher Theo Dane (Nadine Higgin), and the bumbling car repair man Jai Saran (Raj Bajaj). After being booted out of every state school in the area, the girls are enrolled in the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training, where luckily Dane is the teacher. Here they discover their passions for acting, ballet and er… being a mechanic. The whole plot is basically implausible – especially their apparent abject poverty with the Kensington postcode – but here we have the set up for the perfect modern(ish) fairytale.
Frankie Bradshaw’s beautiful set and props are responsible for a lot of the magic. Most of the action takes place in the higgledy piggledy house filled with bones, while the props take the story to places far away from the Cromwell Road. Steeped in childlike imagination, chairs, suitcases and sheets transform into a wayward ship. At one point concertina fans make a gaggle of chickens, at another twirling umbrellas become a caterpillar.
If this sounds like it might be a serious play about a sad sack group of orphans, worry not. Ballet Shoes is packed with laughs dispatched through many clever and zingy one liners from Feaver, along with the occasional bit of slapstick. Droll Salinger is the MVP of the whole production. Playing five different characters, at one point he’s the off-kilter Gum, next he’s dressed in drag as the melodramatic ballet madame, then suddenly he appears as the gruff drama director. It’s a wonder how he’s not left backstage tangled up in a pair of tights, but he gets through all the quick changes and delivers each character with aplomb, nailing every punchline with expert comic timing.
It’s not exactly high stakes – about the worst thing to happen is one sister missing an important appointment – and ever so occasionally Ballet Shoes veers toward worthy territory. We learn lots of lessons about what’s important (following your passions!) and what’s not (being mean to others in the face of ambition!) However, this is a show in which corny is currency. It’s also incredibly moving – I had to wipe a tear from the corner of my eye on more than one occasion. Everything wraps up terribly neatly in the end, but that is sort of what you’d expect from a play based on a children’s novel.
And yes, this is a play that children will love, but adults will adore it just as much. It’s a feminist story, with many a one-liner about what sort of terrible things can happen to women if they don’t stand up for themselves etcetera etcetera. It’s also ostensibly a play about little girls that dress up in tutus. But I genuinely think this production will be enjoyed by everyone. Including little girls, boys, parents, single adults, Gen Zers, Millenials, grandparents, you get the picture. Because at its core it is a heartwarming, joyful tale, packed with characters you can root for. And it’s funny. Ballet Shoes is a perfect Christmas show, and if it didn’t warm the heart of even the biggest Grinch I would be thoroughly surprised.
