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.