Reviewed by Talia Carl­isle

The set of Soho Cinders is a simple train sta­tion in Lon­don, but the story, design and per­form­ances are far from simple.

A saucy queer rewrite of Cinder­ella, Soho Cinders tells us the story of Rob­bie (Chris McMil­lan), who’s caught between sug­ar daddy Lord Belling­ham (Stan­ford Reyn­olds) and Lon­don May­or­al Can­did­ate James Prince (Michael Stebbings). Along the way, we meet oth­er char­ac­ters remin­is­cent of the ori­gin­al story – Clod­agh (Ellie Stew­art) and Dana (India Loveday) stick­ing out to me as super­stars of the show.

The show shines with vibrancy, with gor­geous cos­tumes, immacu­late brightly-col­oured eye­shad­ow and a lot of life and spir­it. Both McMil­lan and Stebbings had great chem­istry and aww moments with their onstage bffs/duets part­ners (Rob­bie with bestie Vel­cro (Aoife Walsh), James and fiancé Mar­ilyn (Abi­gail Helsby)).

My favour­ite song, “So Over Men” really got the audi­ence pump­ing, and in gen­er­al the ensemble was very ver­sat­ile with excel­lent quick cos­tume changes! The booth sing­ers were very worth men­tion­ing – beau­ti­ful har­mon­ies with the beau­ti­ful music all across the show, and the live band added anoth­er fab­ulous ele­ment to the piece – the key­board­ist (Shawn Con­don) added some beau­ti­ful twinkles when magic was needed and gui­tar­ist Ed Blun­den con­fid­ently man­euvered a var­ied score with the com­mit­ment of the full band.

I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed Aimee Sul­li­van as the Nar­rat­or, who added fant­ast­ic detail to set the scene and char­ac­ters amongst the oth­er­wise plain phys­ic­al back­drop and cla­ri­fy details that cleared up the story – I rather liked “and they all lived happy ever” on her jack­et at the end!

Our Red-lim­ited audi­ence side could eas­ily feel the com­mit­ment of the entire cast and crew to deliv­er such a full pro­duc­tion to a less than full audi­ence due to COVID restric­tions. If only that com­mit­ment could have been put into the more ser­i­ous ele­ments of the show – con­sid­er­ing the dated lan­guage and sexu­al assault con­tent that is breezed over, as are the major­ity of the women in the story – unwrit­ten, and cliched. What was­n’t fine in 2011 def­in­itely isn’t now and if you address an issue, fol­low it through. This aspect is addressed in the show pro­gramme, stat­ing the views in the show are not those expressed by Foot­lights, and instead dir­ects atten­tion to the queer sup­port group InsideOut who had partnered with this sea­son.

It takes a lot to put on a show under Red, and it’s really hard to adhere to all COVID restric­tions when cre­at­ing a work with this many lay­ers, so kudos to all involved. You really deserve to feel proud of what you’ve accom­plished.