Fairytale proves heavy on its feet

There aren't many obvious points of common interest between Hans Christian Andersen and Sex in the City's Carrie Bradshaw, but one point on which they do concur is the importance to a girl of having the right footwear. Red shoes, Jimmy Choos: the line of succession continues uninterrupted. Bradshaw can, however, count herself lucky that her shoe addiction cost her only a deposit on a flat, as The Girl from the fairytale, as retold here by Kneehigh Theatre, loses both body parts and sanity.

The Girl is a young orphan, taken in by a blind, old woman, reclothed and reshod. The Shoemaker, a dashing individual, jettisons his customary black leather and instead offers The Girl shoes of the shiniest

crimson, "shoes as red as wounds ... shoes as red as desire". This colour, dripping with its connotations of sex, blood, temptation and devilishness, does not bode well for her as she attends her first communion. Soon, she is condemned to dance forever, all over the land.

A salutary tale indeed, especially with London Fashion Week just passed, but as presented in Emma Rice's production, a strangely passionless one. The oddly artificial style, with Giles King's Lady Lydia controlling the action from on high like a dea ex machina, hinders the narrative progression and reduces the pace to a slow trot, instead of the breathless gallop that it should be.

The five-strong cast, who start off clad in grubby white vests and Y-fronts, work as best they can with the little that they have. Their facial expressions during the long (too long) periods of wordlessness are exquisite, and Bec Applebee as The Girl beautifully conveys an awareness of her nascent attractiveness and, later, an unstoppable frenzy. But for all that, it is hard to imagine Kneehigh's target audience. Adults will head for more sophisticated fare, and children will not find enough in this parable of sin and the possibility of redemption to still their ever-jumpy attention spans.