Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the orphan girl who is led astray by her vanity and ends up paying a bitter price for her selfish pleasure, is perhaps a brave choice for the RSC’s Christmas offering. This is a fairy story that resists any sugar coating, although the version by Nancy Harris flirts with the idea in the form of a ‘Prince’ who meets her at a ball and subsequently finds her shoes in the forest. However the joke is a dark one since the discarded shoes are a reminder of Karen’s amputated feet, which prove to be a turn-off for the vacuous rich kid (Kody Mortimer).

Oh, sorry, didn’t you know?

Yes, Karen (Nikki Cheung) the orphan girl, becomes the owner of a pair of magical red shoes, made by the renowned shoemaker, Sylvestor (Sebastien Torkia). Sylvestor has a glint of evil mischief about him such that when Karen puts the shoes on her feet they take on a life of their own. Whilst on the one hand enabling Karen to indulge in her love of dancing, on the other, in doing so they create mayhem. Try as she might she is unable to take them off so there is only one way out….

Her adoptive parents, Mariella and Bob Nugent (Dianne Pilkington, James Doherty) who do good for all the wrong reasons are played for laughs as stereotypical, nouveau-riche social climbers. Harris gives them a ghoulish and marvelously creepy son, Clive (Joseph Edwards), who has an unhealthy interest in chopping up creatures and stuffing them. One of the interesting design features of the production is the use of masked actors on plinths to represent the results of his taxidermy skills. In this version Clive, with some relish, stands in for Andersen’s executioner by chopping off her feet after Karen realises she is responsible for the death of Mags (Sakuntala Ramanee) the delicate and sensitive cook and housekeeper to the Nugents.

In the original version Karen dies when her heart bursts with joy at being taken back into her church, vanity forgiven. Harris offers a more practical moral: Karen carries on dancing on her peg feet indicating that whilst not a sugary happy resolution we are left with the idea that we indeed create our own endings.

Director and choreographer, Kimberley Rampersad, finds whatever light touches are to be had and integrates the dance scenes seamlessly into the action.

The music by Marc Teitler, delivered by an elevated onstage band, is exquisite and varies from the lyrical to a danse macabre with sensitive incidental music throughout.

If what you want from a family Christmas show is a bit of seasonal moralizing this show is just the ticket. What holds it back from greater impact is the thin plot and lack of any sympathetic central character since Karen is the author of her own misfortune and thus an anti-heroine.