The Miles Sisters present their show, The Little Glass Slipper Presented By The Queen of France and Her Friends at the Edinburgh Fringe’s digital strand.
Filmed before an audience last year at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, Texas, it has superb production values and is a highly enjoyable hour’s entertainment.
As the Queen stages her moment of fun, the people are set to revolt and the Bastille is about to fall. It is July 1789 and there is revolution afoot. It’s the last chance to enjoy a carefree and privileged existence.
Cara Johnston writes, directs, and stars as the Queen, and she is excellent, exuding majesty, elegance and arrogance. The supporting cast are fun and their character cavorting is appropriately awful.
Showcasing both the historical issues rocking French society and the story of Cinderella, this show is perforned with verve and understanding, helped by Jerry Miles’s costumes and choreography by Alicia Rice.
In a year where we have seen several takes on Cinderella on both stage and screen, this play within a play is fairly faithful to the traditional Perrault tale (here named as Cendrillon).
This show gets points for being both ambitious and daring, while remaining fairly light and very entertaining. If you know your history you know Marie Antoinette’s fate, and in watching her at play you see a different facet of her life.
The Little Glass Slipper is an excellent example of what theatre can achieve when it is treated with a bit of imagination and faith. It’s the lockdown mentality of ‘the show must go on’ turned on its head.
You can stream The Little Glass Slipper throughout the Fringe: purchase your tickets here.
For more on the Miles Sisters go here, and you can also visit the show’s website.
****