Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Nikki Cheung impresses as the girl who loves dancing so much she’s carried away by her shoes, but Nancy Harris’s script frustrates

Hans Christian Andersen’s dark fairytale about a girl obsessed with dancing is enthralling if you ignore its dated moral warning about the dangers of female “vanity” and disobedience. Karen loves dancing so much she is, literally, carried away by her shoes. This version by Nancy Harris promises to bring the story into the 21st century. Is it enough to do that by putting characters into modern dress?

Marc Teitler’s music is lovely and Colin Richmond’s set and costumes are exquisite. But beneath the attractively modernised surface, the story upholds the old morality, undermining it only in the last lines of the play, and not in a way that resolves its core sadism toward a girl who dares to look in the mirror and have “notions about herself”. There is no attempt to bridge the gulf between the Christian notion of vanity that Andersen wrote about and our selfie-obsessed culture either.

At the Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 19 January