BRUNTON THEATRE, MUSSELBURGH
ACCORDING to a recent study, women who have been abused by their partners are disproportionately likely to identify with Cinderella. The theory is that if your role model is a submissive fairytale character, you'll be
lieve that love alone will be enough to end your frog-prince's violent behaviour.
It depends, of course, whether you've been influenced by an insipid telling of the tale or a more plucky version in which the girl wins through because of skill and ingenuity. Either way, if you think Cinderella is a dubious role model, what hope her ugly sisters? However the story is told, the pair are the very archetype of selfishness, cruelty and bad behaviour. If you're concerned about body fascism just think of the damage caused by the idea that an ugly outside equals an ugly inside.
The girls in Mike Kenny's Cinderella's Sisters are neither fat slags nor paragons of slim-line beauty. What they are - as played by a gallus Helen Devon and Michele Gallagher in Gill Robertson's zesty production for Catherine Wheels - is a pair of lively young women trying to work out the mixed-up emotions of adolescence. Their admiration for their stepsister comes across as spite, their love as aloofness and their passion as competitiveness. If their actions appear to be ugly, it is not how they feel on their vulnerable inside.
In this telling, they're also deeply into ballroom dancing. Encouraged by their ambitious mother - whose marriage to a man in a posh house brings the gifted Cinderella into the family - they are zealous practitioners of the cha-cha-cha and the quickstep. All pulled-back hair and frozen smiles, they train for the championships with an obsessive enthusiasm. When Cinderella (whom we never see) turns out to be a prize-winning natural on the dance floor, they are so wounded in defeat that they put away their dancing shoes for good.
All this is done with good humour and physical force in Robertson's production, pitched at any child who's grown too familiar with the original - especially those with a love of dance. With Karen Tennent's witty set (the slipper staircase is a treat) and Dave Trouton's lively soundtrack, it makes for a frothy 50 minutes. The shame is that it is too short to match the emotional depths of the original, leaving us with an enjoyable but lightweight piece of theatre.
