Aladdin review: A favourite Christmas fairytale turned into steps that speak to everyone

Few people since Royal Ballet co-founder Frederick Ashton can take the often snooty classical technique and turn it into steps that speak to everyone. 

Think West Side Story, then Swan Lake. 

Bintley aims Aladdin, one of our favourite Christmas fairytales and a sort of Romeo And Juliet, at the seasonal family audience. 

But his steps would also perfectly fit the tragic feathery love story of Odette and Odile on their gloomy pond.  

Tall and elegant, Mathias Dingman was an ideal Aladdin last week at Birmingham Royal Ballet’s London stopover in their current busy UK tour. 

And though his virtuoso tricks were occasionally a little wobbly it was clearly due to excessive enthusiasm and not lack of talent. 

Aladdin’s tale of rags to riches is propped up by two women. 

First his mother, with the indefatigable Marion Tait bringing all her stagecraft to add to the jollity, then the love of his life, Momoko Hirata’s Princess Badr al-Budur.  

Hirata is a beautiful dancer dealing with Bintley’s choreographic challenges using a silky expertise, while responding in the best possible taste to Aladdin’s passionate overtures. 

But if there is a spot-light stealer it is Tzu-Chao Chou the Djinn of the Lamp. 

Costume designer Sue Blane paints him blue, including his apparently shaved head, but Bintley seems to have designed Chou’s dance steps for him to show off and my goodness it works. 

He spins and jumps with little apparent contact with terra firma, while his magic pours exotic streams of wealth over Aladdin and his beloved Princess.  

Some men have all the luck.  

Carl Davis’s 1999 score sounds fresh and generous played by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Philip Ellis while Dick Bird’s sets are both simple and elaborately Eastern. 

Their centre stage positioning allows the dancers passage through and up stage of them, achieving a cunning and effective feeling of space. 

But it is Bintley’s steps and staging that gives the show its status. 

From massive underground caverns filled with human treasure to Dingman and Hirata’s final love duet on an empty stage, Bintley’s dramatic focus never waivers. 

If BRB turns up at a theatre near you (and it matters little what they dance) do not think twice; just go.