Now, I need to say that I am very precious when it comes to “Ballet Shoes” and early trailers and posters for this show made me reluctant to see it. Any kind of re-imagining, any kind of modernising…..these things were not going to land well with me. It’s a book I’ve read so many times, both as a child and as a parent, that I can spot the smallest deviation from the plot and some will definitely bother me more than others. But in many ways, this was a great piece of standalone theatre and I imagine someone who isn’t like me and isn’t overly familiar with the book would enjoy it more than yours pedantically. Who is now worrying about whether I’ve spelt “pedantically” right or whether it’s even a word. Should that be “spelled”? I’m clearly not cut out for pedant life.
With that in mind, I’m going to just list out all of my gripes upfront and then I can write the review of the show in a way that’s more balanced. So here we go:
- Pauline’s character seemed all wrong. Book Pauline is restrained and polite until she suffers a case of over-inflated ego during “Alice”. This Pauline seemed just…..stroppy. Some of the bits given to her (like not wanting to dance in Theo Dane’s room) were far more Petrova than Pauline
- Winifred was far too pretty and confident. Her defining characteristic in the book is being plain and mousy although she is also talented. This Winifred seemed like cookie-cutter Mean Girl/Alpha Female
- Dr Jakes was far too grumpy. In the book, she and Dr Smith (MIA) are kindly and supportive of the girls’ careers. I guess they were trying to add a character arc by having tension between her and Theo but it was unnecessary in my opinion. A “women lifting younger women up” arc would have been much more satisfying than “grumpy lesbian slowly warms to family life”. Also, would 1930s kids have known the word “lesbian”?
- Sylvia was too young and the drama around whether the babies were actually hers was also unnecessary. I know she’s youngish in the book but she was at least 16 before Pauline came home, not 12. Chapter Two of the book, which is six years after Gum’s last departure, mentions her turning grey. She also was not a Rosie the Riveter type who worked in the factory and cleaned hospitals. She was a typically modest and gently anxious 1930s woman.
- The girls’ ages make no sense – Pauline is 14 at the start of the show and 15 at the end, so all the events of the book are condensed into a year. But how is Posy working when she would still be too young at the end? The book makes it very clear that children had to be 12 before they could have a licence. Was it just convenient to have her and Winifred as fairies in MSND instead of two nameless girls? This is only half a nitpick as Eva pointed out that the girls’ ages are inconsistent in the book as well. In Chapter One, it says that Petrova arrived a year after Pauline and both were small babies but then a few pages later it describes Pauline as almost four and Petrova as just 16 months. Another few pages on and Pauline is six and Petrova 4 and a half. So she caught up a bit somehow. Mind you, this is Noel Streatfeild who managed to write two Christmasses into “Gemma and Sisters” with nothing but a January in between them.
- Large bits of the plot around how they manage to make the money stretch are taken out, which I wouldn’t mind if it was a time issue. But they found time to add in extra storylines around Madame’s backstory and Sylvia’s love of art. The triumphs in the book are all the more triumphant because you know how they had to pawn their precious necklaces to buy material for that audition frock.
- Mrs Simpson erasure. Mr Simpson/Saran should not be a love interest for Sylvia as that’s not his part in the plot. His part is to be a mentor for Petrova as no one else takes an interest in her. Making it about Sylvia makes his interest in Petrova a bit creepy, as if he’s only doing it to get close to her guardian.
- Why was Madame played by a man? (Justin Salinger, who also played Gum) Was that meant to make her into a comedy character? If so, why? Also, I was not happy with the ending. No complaints with Manoff being turned into a woman though not sure why she was French instead of Czechslovakian
With all these gripes, you might wonder why I booked and why I said initially that it was actually a great show. Well, the booking was at Eva’s request and any sign that she wants to do something other than watch YouTube is to be pounced on. She’s not a great fan of leaving the house. And why it was actually a good show? Well, I will unpack that shortly. Let’s rewind though and here I am at Waterloo with a bunch of flowers and a bag of mini tambourines, eating udon and hoping to meet a man under the iconic clock:
When I booked the tickets for the show, I’d completely forgotten that I would be at a conference in Marylebone all day so I didn’t have time to go home and get Eva before 7pm. She’s not quite ready to traverse Central London on her own as she can do buses on trusted routes but three different trains might be a demand too far after a long week at school. So poor Nathan had to bring her all the way to Waterloo to meet me while I had enough time betwixt conference and theatre to sit and enjoy a bowl of udon at Marugame. Waterloo at rush hour is a bit hectic but the upper level is relatively calm and Marugame is a relaxed, canteen-style dining experience. I hadn’t eaten much in the way of conference lunch because eating standing up and talking to colleagues is a tricky ask for someone as clumsy as I am. So a bowl of noodles and sticky yaki meatballs went down well. I felt a little guilty that I was chilling instead of madly dashing across London to get Eva but I made up for it by buying her halloumi fries and fries-fries in Burger King so I had dinner ready for her when they arrived.
I paid Nathan for his time with the bag of flowers and mini tambourines and Eva enjoyed her Burger King feast to the sound of buskers playing “California Dreaming”. From there, it was just a short walk to the National Theatre and along the way we passed the mural of Paddington Bear which we’d seen being painted a few months back:
I don’t have a photo of it being painted but Eva and I both remembered it so it must have happened.
For the National Theatre, just head past the Southbank food market at the back of the Royal Festival Hall and follow this sign:
The show is in the Olivier Theatre, which is a couple of flights up so if you have a child who doesn’t like stairs, you might wanna wait for a lift. We had unusual seats in that they were sold as “Restricted View” but seemed to be very close to the stage (Row C). I had done a little research on the super helpful seatplan website and seen pictures of the view, which looked absolutely fine but a few reviews said the seats were narrower than usual, which I’d agree with. We went down one of the side aisles initially – I think that’s what our ticket said to do – but after some confusion and Eva going back up to go to the loo and then me going to look for her – we realised that the middle aisle was much easier for access to the seats. It required squeezing through a smallish gap and climbing over to an extent but the view from these seats was fantastic and took you right to the heart of the action.
The set was also fantastic – 999 Cromwell Road was brought to life with a two-level set, packed with fossils and pictures of dinosaurs. Plus an old piano to the side, which provided the opening to the show as a lady pianist made her way unsteadily across the stage to play it.
I really liked the fleshing out of Gum’s adventures and the way the shipwreck and mountain accident are brought to life are really quite spectacular. Gum’s character is one of the few that I considered to be spot on…he’s gallant but ridiculously selfish and possibly has ADHD (it’s line about how “time meant nothing” to him that chimed with me). As he chucks baby after baby at poor Nana (Jenny Galloway), he does so with the arrogance that Gum is meant to have….that his work is more important than any practical concerns Nana might have. Nana is another character that both looks and acts exactly as the book version does, which is pleasing. Posy (Daisy Sequerra) and Petrova (Yanexi Enriquez) are also pretty much as I would expect them to be, with Posy self-obsessed and excitable and Petrova living only for her engines. I’m not sure why Posy’s talent as a impersonator wasn’t included though as that’s an important part of her character in the book and stops her being too unbearable.
I should say that there’s nothing wrong with the acting – Pearl Mackie’s Sylvia is the right characterisation for the lines she was given but this liberated woman is not the Sylvia I know. Similarly Grace Saif gives Pauline all the expressions that match the script – the rolling eyes and pouting – but it’s just not book-Pauline. The actors do a great job, especially those that need to dance as well as act, but it’s more the creative decisions that feel a bit anachronistic…like they’re trying to impose modern teenage traits on a Pauline from almost 100 years ago. It’s the same as the gender-blind casting that sees men with moustaches in tutus taking ballet with their very masculine Madam. It’s a very modern sensibility that, to my mind, jars with the 1930s setting. The costuming is beautiful and very much of the right era so it’s not like the whole story has been transplanted to 2025…just some of the attitudes and personalities.
Some of the changes are less jarring. Theo Dane’s character is quite different but works just fine for her role in the plot, which is to introduce the children to the Academy. And along the way we have one of the most joyous scenes in the whole show, where the children dance the charleston to a gramophone in Theo’s room. I didn’t even mind her backstory being merged with the characters from the walls of the Academy – Baby Cora etc – as I feel like that was a nod to the book fanatics, of which I think I’m probably one. Nadine Higgin has some serious Jazz Age moves and they were used to great effect in this scene.
In fact, the dancing was probably one of the strongest aspects of the show because that’s what justifies it being a play rather than just an audiobook. Xolisweh Ana Richards and Georges Hann as backstory characters provided a lovely pas de deux as a kind of interlude to the main plot. And that bit also had a striking revolution scene that called to mind Les Mis (I know it’s a different revolution but the visuals are similar). Although I mentioned earlier that this backstory wasn’t really in the book I didn’t mind too much because it added both beauty and drama. And, inexplicably, chickens.
There are also some spectacular moments using aerial acrobatics. I don’t think that’s a spoiler because it’s in the trailer for the show but it was a really thrilling time to be seated near the front when Petrova whooshed over our heads. I wish there hadn’t been such a bright light right behind her as it made it hard to look up but that might be the “Restricted View” part of our otherwise excellent seats.
(Excellent in terms of view, not in terms of comfort. But I cannot complain!)
In fact, the whole “Midsummer Night’s Dream” segment was pretty visually spectacular. In the book, Nana complains about the overly modern costume design, so this was a natural progression of giving Nana stuff to complain about. It was indeed very modern – all silver tubes and clown hats – but it was meant to be cutting edge, so I was happy with that. By contrast, the “Alice” costumes were very classic, with Pauline and Winifred in powder blue and white, flanked by human playing cards. It made me very nostalgic for my first ever dance show in 1987, which had very similar costumes.
The everyday costumes of the characters were mainly spot on – the sisters had simple cotton frocks while Madame had rich colours and furs. I liked the way that that the girls seemed to be wearing Gum’s old nightshirts and Gum himself was what Eva likes to describe as “very fashion”. She also said that Dr Jakes (Helena Lymbery) was, and I quote the tween here, “very yes”.
The pacing was good throughout the show – there’s a lot of plot to get through and 2 hours 40 mins seems like a long time but it went by fast. There’s an interval after the very first “we vow” scene and Eva and I took the opportunity to stretch our legs and have some mango sorbet. There’s a lovely view from the foyer outside the stalls as well:
Post theatre, Eva was still hungry and my udon from earlier was not quite carrying me through so luckily GBK on Waterloo Road was still open to supply her with a late night vegan burger:
So I realise this has been an unconventional review because I usually try to be very positive and if I have any nitpicks, I would normally weave them in among the positivity. But overall, it was an enjoyable experience. It’s just that, as a fan of the books, there were a few elements that didn’t sit right with me. I know other commenters have said not to expect a faithful rendition but I can’t help having a fixed idea in my head of how these characters should be….after all, they’ve been with me all my life. So thank you for indulging all my grouching and be assured – if you’re not an obsessive reader of the books, then you will probably enjoy it all the more.
Don’t take my word for it – here’s the link for tickets and more info if you’re intrigued. Our seats were only £25 each and we were so close to the stage, so it was definitely worth a punt. Just take it at face value and try not to pick too many holes and you’ll have a great time.
What better way to end this post with a picture of lockdown-era Eva dressed as Posy Fossil? Pity she didn’t take the fright wig with her to the theatre….
