Onwards to Croydon!

A faithful staging of the much-loved Ballet Shoes is a triumph and Sir Simon Russell Beale is outstanding as a melancholy poet in an overdue Stoppard revival

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I WAS recently told by a female friend that ‘every girl reads Ballet Shoes, no boy ever does’. A quick straw poll suggests there is some truth in this Wildean aphorism. I certainly came to the Olivier Theatre’s version of Noel Streatfeild’s novel in a state of total innocence and was bowled over by the story, the staging, the acting and the relevance of a 1936 book to today’s world. This is far and away the National’s best show since James Graham’s Dear England.

Where to start? I assume my female readers will know that this is the story of three orphaned girls, brought up in the home of an eccentric professor, with distinct ambitions: for Pauline it is acting, for Posy it is dancing and for Petrova it is involvement in anything mechanical. The joy of Katy Rudd’s production and Kendall Feaver’s adaptation is the way these dreams are made manifest.

The world of drama is evoked through a very funny, futuristic version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Dance is ever present and yields a sublime moment when a veteran Russian emigré has a mirrored vision of her sylph-like younger self. Petrova’s love of flight is symbolised by the way she floats aerially over the audience’s heads and by the aviatrix’s triumphant climactic cry of ‘Onwards to Croydon!’ As that line indicates, this version is faithful to the 1930s, yet seems strikingly modern in its assertion that there is no limit to what young women can achieve. The shifting kaleidoscopic beauty of the production and of Frankie Bradshaw’s design is matched by the wit of the writing: Jenny Galloway’s stoic Nana, who keeps the household in order, remarks that she has retained her religious faith despite inhabiting a world of ‘dinosaurs, fairies and lesbians’.