An Ode to Realising Dreams
Ballet Shoes was forever a tome on my grandparents’ shelves, amongst the Ballet Annuals that my mum collected when young. It is hard to imagine her dreaming of being a ballerina, afflicted with bad asthma and often bed-ridden as she was in those days, writes Eleanor Thorn.
I too fell under the charm of the book, but as I slipped into my seat, with my eleven year old by my side, wearing the Christmas Hello Kitty ballerina necklace she’d just made, I realised I could recall nothing whatsoever of the story of Noel Streatfeild’s classic that has been popular since its 1936 first edition.
The National Theatre’s production has the theatricality, scene changes and sets of a musical with all the dance and none of the song. And not all ballet, that’s for sure, with big band jazz being more dominant than music to pirouette to. The show retains a lightness of tone throughout, allowing little digs at Croydon, a tongue-in-cheek jibe at contemporary production (hilarious costumes in one stage show the three girls work in) and chuckles about the idiosyncrasies of its characters that cause the audience to titter in amusement, whilst dealing with the big serious stuff that dreams are made of: aspirations, passions, non-conformist barrier-breaking and “Who am I?”.
Sylvia (Pearl Mackie) is 11 (my daughter the perfect audience member) when deposited, orphaned, at the home of her Great Uncle Matthew (GUM), who is put out at the inconvenience but soon comes round, won over by her artistic talent at bringing his floor to ceiling to kitchen cupboard collection of dinosaur bones to life with her illustrations. But his new parental role is not strong enough to quell his taste for palaeontologist expedition, and off he takes to the high seas, time and time again. Astonishingly for someone with so little appetite for family life, he accumulates three baby girls in quick succession, who like Sylvia are deposited in the big house with Nana (Jenny Galloway). And off he goes.
Seven years later, with GUM showing no sign of reappearing and the house falling into disrepair, the three Miss P Fossils, Pauline, Petrova and Posy (Grace Saif, Yanexi Enriquez, Daisy Sequerra) are growing into independently-minded dreamers. Lodgers are required for survival purposes, lodgers who become mentors in endearing ways, and we have an unconventional household of eight, a ‘found family’, with Sylvia now called Garnie (for Guardian). Acting, aviation and ballet are the different chosen paths before them. Elderly, revered ballet teacher Madame Fidolia is severe but very influential and I shamefacedly wonder whether I was the only one in the theatre not to realise that GUM and Fidolia were one and the same Justin Salinger as my programme tells me: a triumph of talent indeed!
The second half dazzles with more ballet and masterful moments of scenography: an Alice In Wonderland tea party dissolves magically into a Christmas scene; Petrova flies; Fidolia remembers her younger self reflected in a mirror; the backdrop parts to become the modern-day A23 to Croydon (then aeronautic hub). The three once more vow undying sisterly love and commitment as they part. Tears roll down my daughter’s cheeks, snivels are suppressed and laughter is not. The auditorium is abuzz with appreciation of this ode to the stage and the realising of dreams.
National Theatre, Upper Ground, South Bank, London, SE1 9PX until 22nd February. Times: Mon – Sat 7pm; Wed & Sat matinees 1.30pm. Admission: £25 – £99.
Booking: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
