Cinderella

No single author, no settled form

Cinderella reaches a stage without an author to answer to. Charles Perrault's telling is the one most English-language adaptations lean on, but the title has no fixed score, no authorised book and nobody to rule on what counts. That is why it appears in Britain every winter in three or four incompatible shapes at once: a three-act classical ballet, a comedy with men in frocks, a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical written for television, and whatever a choreographer or producer decides to build next.

The one element most serious stagings share is Sergei Prokofiev's score, composed between 1940 and 1944 and first danced at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow on 21 November 1945, choreographed by Rostislav Zakharov with Galina Ulanova in the title role and Yuri Fayer conducting. Written through the war, it keeps a hard edge under the waltzes, and it has carried almost every major dance version since.

Ashton's homage, and the ballet that stayed

Frederick Ashton had wanted to make a full-evening ballet since 1939 and chose Prokofiev's score to do it. Sadler's Wells Ballet gave the premiere at the Royal Opera House on 23 December 1948, with Moira Shearer as Cinderella, Michael Somes as the Prince, Alexander Grant as the Jester, and Ashton himself alongside Robert Helpmann as the stepsisters, dropping a piece of music-hall cross-dressing into a work built as homage to Petipa.

The Royal Ballet restaged and revised it on 23 December 1965 with Margot Fonteyn and David Blair, Ashton and Helpmann again playing the sisters, and it has remained in the company's repertory ever since. That production fixed the shape British audiences still expect from a danced Cinderella: three acts, a ball at the centre, the comedy handed to the stepsisters.

The musical that began on a Sunday night

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote their Cinderella for CBS rather than Broadway. It went out live on 31 March 1957 with Julie Andrews in the title role, cost $376,000 — more than double the going rate for television then — and was watched by more than 107 million people, in over 60 per cent of American households.

Remakes kept it in circulation. The 1965 version with Lesley Ann Warren scored a 42.3 Nielsen rating, the highest for a non-sports special on CBS until 2009, and the 1997 film with Brandy and Whitney Houston drew around 60 million viewers and became the best-selling video release of a television movie. The first stage version was a 1958 pantomime at the London Coliseum. Broadway waited until 2013, when a staging with a new book by Douglas Carter Beane, starring Laura Osnes and Santino Fontana, began previews on 25 January, opened on 3 March, ran 770 performances to 3 January 2015 and won a single Tony Award, for costume design.

Bourne takes it into the Blitz

Matthew Bourne's version opened at the Piccadilly Theatre on 26 September 1997 and ran to 10 January 1998, with Adam Cooper, Sarah Wildor, Will Kemp and Lynn Seymour. It moved the story to London in 1940: no palace and no pumpkin, but an RAF pilot, an air raid and a godfather figure in a white suit. Lez Brotherston's designs won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance.

It played the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles from 30 March 1999, then sat unused in Britain until Bourne rebuilt it. The revision opened at Sadler's Wells on 8 December 2010 with Kerry Biggin and Sam Archer, carrying new design, lighting and surround sound and an Olivier nomination for best new dance production. A third cycle began at Sadler's Wells on 9 December 2017, ran to 27 January 2018 with Ashley Shaw as Cinderella and then toured 19 venues into June 2018. It was broadcast on BBC Two, where 429,600 people watched, and screened in roughly 300 cinemas; American dates in Charlotte, Washington DC and Los Angeles followed in 2019.

The expensive detour

The most recent attempt to write a new Cinderella from scratch did not hold. Andrew Lloyd Webber's version, with a book by Emerald Fennell, lyrics by David Zippel and direction and choreography by JoAnn M. Hunter, began performances at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in June 2021 and closed on 12 June 2022 after repeated pandemic stoppages. Lloyd Webber later called opening under Covid restrictions a costly mistake.

Retitled Bad Cinderella and recast with Linedy Genao in the lead, it opened at Broadway's Imperial Theatre on 23 March 2023 and closed on 4 June after 33 previews and 85 performances, with no Tony nominations. Its closing left Broadway without a running Lloyd Webber musical for the first time in more than forty years.

Two seasons on sale now

Bourne's production is back for its thirtieth anniversary. New Adventures announced the tour on 20 May 2026: 17 venues over 24 weeks, opening at Theatre Royal Plymouth from 16 to 21 November 2026, then the Lowry in Salford from 24 to 28 November, then the company's twenty-fourth Christmas season at Sadler's Wells, 1 December 2026 to 17 January 2027. The 2027 leg runs from Milton Keynes in late January through Woking, Birmingham, Liverpool, Hull, Nottingham, Southampton, Cardiff, Canterbury, Norwich and Glasgow, takes a fortnight in Newcastle, and finishes at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh from 4 to 8 May.

Casting, announced on 17 September 2026, is almost entirely new. Hannah Kremer and Katrina Lyndon alternate as Cinderella, Reece Causton and Rory Macleod share Harry the pilot, James Lovell, Andy Monaghan and Kingston Taylor divide the Angel, and Michela Meazza, Daisy West and Nicole Kabera take the stepmother, Sybil. Meazza is the only dancer in the company who was also in the 1997 production. Seventy-three per cent of the ensemble came through New Adventures' own talent programmes, and Cameron Allan, Ethan Fairclough, Woody Freeman and Harry Hincks make their company debuts. Bourne has said the piece has always held a special place for him, both his parents having been children of the Blitz in the bomb-damaged East End, and that it is a tribute to the city's resilience but mostly about love.

The other Cinderella on sale is the London Palladium pantomime, announced on 24 March 2026 and running from 5 December 2026 to 10 January 2027. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders play the Ugly Sisters, their first West End stage appearance together in 17 years, saying they had wanted the parts for years and warning that it would not be pretty. Julian Clary is the Fairy Godfather, with Nigel Havers, Paul Zerdin and Rob Madge returning, Hope Dawe as Cinderella and Dex Lee as Prince Charming. Michael Harrison produces and directs for Crossroads Pantomimes, following a Sleeping Beauty he said broke the venue's box-office records. Tickets went on general sale on 2 April 2026, from £25.