Ballet Shoes
Olivier Theatre, London
 

AMAZINGLY, Noel Streatfeild’s enduringly popular 1930s children’s book has never been staged by a professional theatre cast, even though there have been two television adaptations.
 
This ground-breaking National Theatre version, reimagined by Kendall Feaver, has the feel of a 1960s blockbuster family movie – Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, perhaps, or Mary Poppins – and its filmic quality radiates with technicolour splendour.
 
A curmudgeon might argue that some of its scenes don’t take the story forward too much, which is possibly why there’s a bit of a helter-skelter information dump at the end, as we catch up with various plot developments we’ve not been made aware of. But that would miss the point.
 
As with the book, this theatrical version is an excuse for a bit of fantasy, even if it is based around an underlyingly gritty tale of three orphaned girls, Posy, Pauline and Petrova, who take to the stage to keep a roof over their heads.
 
Some of those not-necessarily-needed scenes are shimmering highlights of the show, including a movingly drawn sequence in which the girls’ elderly Russian dance teacher sees her life flash before her as she dies alone in her studio. There’s also an exhilarating pastiche in which Petrova, the least dance-enthusiastic of the trio, takes to the air in a stage harness, suddenly discovering there’s something she’s good at.
 
Like that latter scene, much of the action concentrates on how the girls can find self-worth in a world run by the opposite sex, a focus that takes priority over pushing the plot ahead.
 
It’s a message successfully delivered via a character-base of strong, supportive women, all pulling together in an extended family, yet without straying into anything too didactic, platitudinous or sentimental.
 
Choreography, of course, plays a big part. But this is a play, not a dance show, and while there’s ballet on display, none of it is of the Covent Garden variety.
 
The cast are splendid, the costumes are striking, and the set by Frankie Bradshaw – based around the fusty interior of a three-storeyed, many roomed London house, piled up high above the stage – is the bedrock of what is a very pretty looking spectacle.
 
There were lots of smiling audience faces at the end, and quite a few happy tears. Like the book, this production is destined to bring joy to many, both young and old.

Runs until February 22. Box Office: 020 3989 5455, nationaltheatre.org.uk