Festive, feel-good, and fresh. This production breaks down the traditional character binaries we expect to find in fairytales
This reimagining of Cinderella takes us into the heart of Brixton, where we meet Sindi-Ella, a teenager struggling to keep her late father’s greengrocers shop afloat amidst the encroaching tides of gentrification. This production by the newly opened Brixton House stars Yanexi Enriquez as the lead, Sindi-Ella, starring alongside Alex Thomas-Smith, Julene Robinson, Jesse Bateson and Ray Emmet Brown. The musical features music by Duramaney Kamara, with script and lyrics by Danusia Samal.
It’s a familiar fairytale, but this production feels fresh, often quite literally, with a set overgrown with flowers and vegetation. The themes and the set play well to the primarily Brixton-based crowd, and even if you don’t hail from South of the river, it’s almost impossible not to root for and relate to these characters grappling with the changes happening in their part of the city.
The space isn’t huge, for a musical, but this works rather well, with Kamara’s music filling the space and by the end, most of the audience dancing in their seats. Samal’s writing is sharp and fun, but some of the lyrics get lost, particularly when the pace is quicker.
Bateson and Enriquez have great onstage chemistry as warring stepsisters, but it’s Smith, Robinson and Brown who are the strongest actors, and vocalists. Smith brings an infectious energy to the stage, and Robinson plays the stepmother with a nuance and sensitivity that makes it impossible to ever think of prefacing her role with the word ‘evil’. The cast is strong, but it’s undeniably Emmet Brown who steals the show, moving the crowd to tears and of hilarity and heartbreak in his role as dearly departed father, talking delphinium, and wise school teacher. True, he gets to deliver some of Samal’s most inspired lines (‘flowery godfather’) – but he delivers them wonderfully.
The true genius of this production is in its breaking down of the traditional character binaries of good and evil that one expects to find in fairytales. Every character is permitted to share their perspective, and the production is more human, and more persuasive as a result.
This is an irrepressibly fun, clever and energetic retelling of Cinderella – and I would highly recommend getting to Brixton House to see it before the run ends on 31st December. Make sure to stop by the bar before you head in, to try the ‘Cinderella’, an original Brixton House cocktail which is as fizzy and fun as the production itself.