Cinderella, Sadler’s Wells, London, dance review: 'Otherworldly elegance'

Created in 1997, Matthew Bourne's Cinderella is set in the London Blitz of 1940

This production shows off Matthew Bourne's gift for period detail, while Lez Brotherston’s magnificent designs blend glamour and wartime austerity (Johan Persson)

There’s a lush, big-screen glow to Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella, which moves deftly from 1940s musical to film noir gothic and back. By moving the story to 1940, to the London Blitz, Bourne finds new resonances in the story, and in Prokofiev’s music. The hero still seeks his beloved, clutching her lost shoe – but in the aftermath of an air raid, he fears a different kind of loss.

Created in 1997, and revised since, Bourne’s Cinderella shows off his gift for period detail, and his genius as a producer. Lez Brotherston’s magnificent designs blend glamour and wartime austerity, black-and-white film imagery with touches of glowing colour. Cinderella, a bespectacled and becardiganed Ashley Shaw, has to cope with a quintet of stepsisters and brothers, as well as Michela Meazza’s monstrous, Joan Crawford-like stepmother.

The prince, in this wartime world, is an injured, idolised fighter pilot who is comforted by Cinderella. The ball becomes a night out at the Café de Paris, a real nightclub that was destroyed in an air raid. The fantasy elements are part fairytale, part concussion.

This approach responds both to the sweeping glamour of Prokofiev’s score, and its darkness. Written during the Second World War, the music has sharp edges. The waltz that sweeps the heroine to the ball has sinister undercurrents, something insistent and driven beneath the sparkle. In Bourne’s version, the air raid has already started, and it’s a strangely perfect fit: excitement, panic and determination to survive become the motors of Cinderella’s fantasy.

Some details work better than others. The second act’s layers of dream and reality aren’t always clear; a subplot about the Stepmother’s wickedness seems to be there because Bourne couldn’t resist the movie imagery (she’s not just Crawford, she’s Bette Davis too). I like the uncosiness of Bourne’s air-raid aftermath, with its threatening gas-masked figures and sardonic sex workers, but the hero’s encounter with a prostitute reads weirdly. Still, Bourne’s sense of period and character is always alert and intelligent.

In this revival, the production feels much dancier than it did before. Ashley Shaw brings a radiant sweep of movement to Cinderella’s dances, matched by Andrew Monaghan as the pilot. They move endearingly between splendour and vulnerability – including a sweet mutual moment of “Put on your glasses, why you’re beautiful”. As the Angel, Bourne’s male fairy godmother figure, Liam Mower dances with otherworldly elegance.

Until 27 January, then touring. Box office 020 7863 9000. www.new-adventures.net