Intrepid Theatre - Cinderella

Once upon a time fairy tales were not the subject of light-hearted Christmas entertainments but the substance of an adult oral tradition which thrived on the shocking and the unsavoury. The Victorians started a process of cleaning them up that continued with Walt Disney, and now the version of Cinderella that is most generally known is unlikely to upset any parental sensibilities. Intrepid Theatre takes Cinderella as the inspiration for its Christmas offering this year but goes back to the Brother's Grimm version for its source material, writer and director Alison West tells me. Only elements of it, though. Whilst the appropriately named Grimm's version saw cut-off toes and pecked-out eyes visited as revenge on the ugly sisters, Intrepid Theatre's production picks up the detail of the 'ugly' sisters as externally beautiful but inwardly dark and evil. 'We wanted to play with concepts of image and beauty', says West, 'which we felt was particularly relevant for a contemporary audience'.

One of the reasons that fairy stories endure (like Shakespeare) is the endless ways they can be updated whilst leaving the universal message intact. Intrepid's production, which features a 30-strong cast of four to eleven year olds, updates its setting to the 1970s. The ball, which Cinderella has to battle the odds to attend, is played out in a disco hall whilst the signature glass slipper is re-written as a 1970's platform heel. Pre-book to secure a happy ever after. ER