Rainbow Stage wraps up season with bright, frothy update on the fairy tale as old as time

Nasty stepfamily, fairy godmother, prince's ball, glass slipper surely, there can be nothing new or surprising about the story of Cinderella, right? To borrow a line from another story, it's literally a tale as old as time.

Rainbow Stage challenges that notion with their update of the 1957 Rodgers and Hammerstein television musical (reviewed on preview night), and even if there still isn't anything that feels especially surprising about the story, it certainly is a lot of bright, colourful, beautifully sung fun.

And a production whose message might offer more than immediately meets the eye.

Douglas Carter Beane's book, rewritten for the 2013 Broadway revival from Hammerstein's original, sets up Prince "Topher" (Darren Martens) as the easily manipulated soon-to-be-ruler of a divided kingdom, and makes "Ella" (Colleen Furlan) a saintly minor-key revolutionary.

Beane's new subplots and characters also mean that Ella and Topher get more agency in realizing their fates and that of the kingdom. By the time Ella's identity is revealed to her Prince, the stakes are (as one character points out directly) much higher than they used to be.

Which is not to say that this isLes Miz. Ella still becomes a princess, and gets her prince. Even one of the stepsisters gets a clearly telescoped happy ending. The tone is 100 per centShrek.

However, the changes may make a tale that's as ancient as Greece more palatable to 21stcentury parents looking for an evening of theatre with their kids that doesn't reinforce outdated archetypes and tropes. Or that at least has the good sense to make fun of them where they can't be avoided.

And where you don't want to avoid them: This Cinderella doesn't hold back on the sequined frocks, the flying frills or the high-note hitting choruses.

Director Rob Herriot has clearly given his cast licence to go big and have fun with it, and this is where the gold at the end of this Rainbow season really starts to shine, as well as seem like more than the sum of its parts.

Narda McCarroll's set says "storybook" in a creative and functional way, and doesn't so much complement Vincent Scassellati and Kenneth Burrell's kaleidoscope of costumes as expand upon it, offering Wonka-esque trees, oversized steps, and a background sky that's utterly convincing and always lit (by Scott Henderson) just right for the moment. Rainbow Stage has never looked more like an actual rainbow than it does here.

The cast, through their pantomime make-up and exaggerated clothes, chew it up like they're in a drag show.

The songs (selected from the original version and supplemented with a few numbers from other Rodgers musicals) aren't particularly memorable, but the performances invest them with so much life that you'll find yourself humming a few of them on the way home anyway.

Martens and Furlan are excellent singers and every bit the prince and spunky upstart we want them both to be. The supporting players, especially Paula Potosky as Crazy Marie and Andrea Del Campo as stepsister Charlotte push us into territory that is way over the top in all of the best ways.

As our carriage carried us home, this dad felt like he hadn't just enjoyed the reward of an evening at the theatre with his little princess, but also of a show that that genuinely has something to say about kindness and inclusiveness.

What a treat that it did so in a way that also made me feel like I'd just seen the campiest, most colourful and joyously subversive production of this theatre season.

That's more magic than I've come to expect from any ball.