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Friday, October 22, 2004, Winnipeg Sun
By PAT ST. GERMAIN
If you're not humming Blue Moon all the way home from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's production of A Cinderella Story, better check your vital signs. Ron Paley's swingy arrangement of the Richard Rodgers standard is the sweetest, most infectious sound in town this weekend.
With Paley's 22-piece big band pumping out gentle jazz in the orchestra pit, the RWB carries the swellegant mood onstage in choreographer Val Caniparoli's whimsical romantic comedy, set in fabulous 1957, just before the live CBS television performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella starring Julie Andrews.
Heroine Nancy (the delovely CindyMarie Small, on opening night, alternates with Emily Grizzell) and her faithful, irrepressibly loopy dog (spotlight-sponge Darren Anderson) are already onstage and watching television as the audience arrives. Tended by a small army of servants -- all of whom do double duty as fantastic feathered-and-furred friends in showstopper scenes later on -- nerdy Nancy's life is disrupted by the arrival of her father (Ballet Master Johnny Chang), with her new family: Vampishly wicked stepmother Tara Birtwhistle (who gives fresh meaning to The Lady is a Tramp) and vicious stepsisters (Cindy Winsor and Sarah Murphy-Dyson).
The classic story proceeds pretty much by the book -- if the book were written under the influence of Bugs Bunny cartoons, with Doris Day-meets-The Jetsons sets and costumes to match. There's a dance, a hunky suitor named Bob -- pizzazz guy Giuseppe de Ruggiero, all style on opening night, alternates with suave new RWB principal dancer Jaime Vargas -- a lost slipper, an attempted poisoning, a flashy sports car, a commercial for Desert Flower cologne, a winsome, lovesick pas de deux, sight gags and a big Isn't it Romantic? finish.
Add a bit of bebop and scat, some jazzy soft-shoe stylin' and a tango, and you can see how far Cinderella shimmies out of the traditional ballet mold -- only Nancy keeps her pointe shoes on the whole time.
But as pure entertainment it's a classic good time.
Sun Rating: 4 out of 5
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