Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Cinderella is all fairy-tale romance, zero sexual frisson

After marking its post-pandemic rebirth with a less-than-enthralling triple bill of new work, Birmingham Royal Ballet settles down with a revival of Sir David Bintley’s 2010 production of Cinderella. Although it’s a visually attractive crowd-pleaser that will draw families back to the live theatre, not a lot more can be said for it. Bintley tweaks the familiar fairy-tale plot without adding much force or originality.

Its most striking image is the one that opens the show: to Prokofiev’s hauntingly melancholy prelude, it shows the eponymous heroine and her stepsisters on a blasted heath mourning at their mother’s tomb. But beyond Cinderella’s treasuring of the latter’s spangled slippers, there’s no follow-through, and we’re soon in familiar territory, with the stepsisters presented as Disneyish caricatures – christened “Skinny” and “Dumpy”, according to the cast list – and no attempt to enrich the story with psychological motivation or emotional depth.

Like many who have gone before him, Bintley also fails to solve the problem of the anticlimactic final scene in which Cinderella is united with her Prince: how much more dramatically satisfying it would be if we knew the stepsisters’ fate and understood the magic behind Cinderella’s transfiguration.

Within this shallow scenario, Bintley’s choreography at least does an effective job. He doesn’t stretch his dancers beyond a conservatively neoclassical vocabulary, but it’s all fluently couched in what he calls “the English style”, with neat footwork and a preference for clarity over virtuosity. It’s pleasant to watch, if instantly forgettable.

Momoko Hirata takes the title-role. That she now stands in BRB’s depleted ranks as their leading ballerina may be cause for concern to Carlos Acosta, Bintley’s incoming successor as the company’s director. Hirata is a winsome slip of a thing, who dances prettily and accurately, but she doesn’t command power or radiance, and her Cinderella is a simpering colourless character, all too well matched to Cesar Morales’s bland well-mannered Prince.

Together they move their two pas de deux by careful numbers, without rapture or excitement, side-stepping the eroticism palpitating through Prokofiev’s music. Acosta must make a priority of developing stronger and, frankly, sexier personality in his dancers, otherwise BRB risks ending up being irrelevant to every section of the audience bar little girls dreaming of pink tutus and satin ballet shoes. To be fair, this is a problem currently faced by ballet companies the world over: plenty of technical competence but not enough imagination or individuality.

On a more positive note, the corps dances with enthusiasm and precision – full marks to the girl who took a nasty tumble on Sunday and immediately recovered her poise – and the orchestra, relayed to the auditorium from an external studio to meet Covid restrictions, plays with gusto. The staging, too, has been skilfully reduced to fit the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, a tighter space. Sensitively lit by Peter Teigen and David Finn, John Macfarlane’s designs look rich in atmosphere, whether suggesting Cinderella’s bleak kitchen or the Prince’s baroque salon. If only the dancing inhabited them with more passion and drama.

In rep until July 10. Tickets: brb.org; 0121 236 4455