National Theatre, Ballet Shoes Review 4*
The National Theatre stages a lavish adaptation of Ballet Shoes, a favourite of successive generations of British children
(image credit: Daisy Sequerra (Posy Fossil), Yanexi Enriquez (Petrova Fossil) and Grace Saif (Pauline Fossil) in Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan)
More than a story about ballet, Kendall Feaver’s adaptation of Noel Streatfeild’s children’s book Ballet Shoes for the National Theatre is a hymn to the empowerment of young women and their absolute right to choose their path in life and follow it regardless of convention.
And incidentally, it is also a paean to the families we choose, rather than those we were born into.
The story, well known surely to most of the NT audience (originally published in 1936, the novel has been popular with successive generations, so much so it’s never been out of print), centres on three orphaned girls, rescued in remote parts of the world by an eccentric palaeontologist.
The Fossil girls – Pauline (Grace Said), Petrova (Yanexi Enriquez) and Posy (Daisy Sequerra) – have firm ideas as to what they want to become, respectively an actress, a pilot and a ballerina. In a predominantly female cast, they are raised by the palaeontologist’s great-niece, Sylvia (Pearl Mackie), an aspiring scientific artist, and the housekeeper Nana (Jenny Galloway), with lodgers Theo Dane (Nadine HIggin) and Doctor Jakes (Helena Lymbery) key in helping the girls follow their dreams.
Here men are very much secondary: the kindly but accident-prone palaeontologist, disappears for years at a time, giving actor Justin Salinger the opportunity to double in a series of mostly female roles; lodger Jai Saran convincingly played by Sid Sagar, initiates Petrova into mechanics, as well as providing a love interest for Sylvia.
In Frankie Bradshaw’s richly detailed sets the elective family live in genteel poverty in a ramshackle house, its dusty cupboards, shelves, nooks and crannies crammed with fossils. Equally rich in detail are the scenes set in the theatre were the children perform to earn much needed money, and, of course, the ballet studio presided over by the daunting Russian émigrée, Madame Fidovia (a wonderfully arch turn by Justin Salinger).
The Company in Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Director Katy Rudd gets convincing performances out of her cast, with Grace Said particular endearing as the temperamental budding actress Pauline, who will follow her dream all the way to Hollywood, and Yanexi Enriquez as the more prosaic but no less determined Petrova, whom we leave well on her way to becoming a pilot, having seen her literally fly in one of the play’s most exhilarating scenes.
Yanexi Enriquez (Petrova Fossil) in Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan
Daisy Sequerra, though, has the most difficult role as the not very relatable, self-absorbed Posy, whose dancing talent, not always totally convincing, nevertheless takes her to a first rate ballet school in Paris.
Action and characterisation have been spruced up for modern sensibilities, the colonial element of the original glossed over, and the character of Doctor Jakes becoming a lesbian, which prompts Nana’s memorable line:
“I’ve had to reconcile myself with dinosaurs, fairies and lesbians.”
Ballet Shoes is enjoyable in parts, though at nearly three hours long it would benefit from judicious cuts, and it’s hard to fathom its target audience: young girls, though is seven is perhaps a little too young? Not young boys, surely. Maybe nostalgic adults?
© Teresa Guerreiro
Ballet Shoes is at the NT Olivier Theatre until 22 February 2025. Info and tickets here