SF Ballet's "Cinderella"

The San Francisco Ballet opened their 2020 season with a revival of their 2013 production of Prokofiev's full-length, 1945 ballet Cinderella. I saw it for the first time last Wednesday, and the show is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen on the War Memorial Opera House stage. Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's production is a wonder, with lavishly creative sets and costumes by Julian Crouch, amusing puppetry design by Basil Twist, and exquisite lighting by Natasha Katz. This is all pulled together by one of Prokofiev's greatest musical scores that is filled with wit, tenderness, darkness, and longing, with the Ballet orchestra giving a tremendous performance under conductor David LaMarche.

The principal dancers rotate during this two-week run, and I saw Dores André as Cinderella and Carlo Di Lanno as Prince Guillaume, pictured above. (All photos are snapshots I took from the SF Ballet program, original production photos by Erik Tomasson). Both dancers were beautiful to watch but did not quite transport one to the romantic stratosphere, but it didn't matter because all the other many dancers were so much fun to watch in roles ranging from The Fates to royalty to servants to gnomes.

With the collaboration of playwright/screenwriter Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, Longtime Companion), Wheeldon created a revised libretto for the ballet that jettisoned the fairy godmother and ticking clock in the ballroom scene that were featured in Prokofiev's 1945 original, and it worked brilliantly well without any changes to the music. Act One begins with a prequel of the death of Cinderella's mother, followed by a scene at her grave where a tree is planted. By the end of the act it has become a character of its own, changing with the seasons and moving psychedelically to Prokofiev's astonishing score.

As usual with most onstage versions of this tale, from Rossini's Cenerentola to Massenet's magical Cendrillon, the evil stepmother and stepsisters steal the show. Jennifer Stahl as Stepmother Hortensia, Jahna Frantziskonis as Stepsister Edwina, and Julia Rowe as Stepsister Clementine were both scary and funny, and they also pulled off the trick of appearing to dance badly while dancing very well indeed. In this version, the Prince's best friend Benjamin, danced with verve and character by Hansuke Yamamoto, ends up taking a shine to Stepsister Clementine and rescues her from evil stepmother Hortensia, who was performed brilliantly by Jennifer Stahl in some of my favorite dancing of the evening.

Instead of roaming the world to find someone whose foot fits the glass slipper, the Prince is presented with an hysterical lineup of characters that included Russian Princess Maggie Weirich, Spanish Princess Kimberly Marie Olivier, Balinese Princess Elizabeth Powell, and various gnomes before finally finding his Cinderella. There are two more performances of the show this weekend, and I can't recommend it highly enough.