New take on Cinderella is set for a fairytale ending

It’s good to watch a young company come into being, establish itself and then begin to really flourish.

Rash Dash, the young theatre company that began life when Abbi Greenland and Helen Goalen met at Hull University started from modest beginnings.

The pair used a student loan to pay for their first show, using the cash to pay for taking their debut to Edinburgh.

Fast forward a few short years and they are now award-winning theatre company Rash Dash, with a string of hit shows to their name and have recently been made an associate company at West Yorkshire Playhouse. It’s not bad going for a couple of young women who set up their company less than five years ago.

“We were dancing and singing together outside a rehearsal room before we ever started working together inside the rehearsal room,” says Goalen, explaining the unique chemistry the pair enjoy.

“I think we knew we would work together on stage because we got on so well off it. We had a similar work ethic and similar ideas, so I think we always knew that we could work well together.”

Goalen’s hunch was right. They staked the student loan on the fact that if they went to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008, they would come up trumps and get noticed in the biggest theatre shop window in the world. It was a gamble that paid off and by 2011 they had won two Fringe First awards in a row.

On a rainy afternoon in early September the beating heart of Rash Dash is playing on the floor of a rehearsal room at Leeds University. The beating heart is Goalen and Greenland, but they no longer make work between just the two of them – the band Not Now Bernard has joined them on stage for the latest show, as has director Kyle Davies.

The two of them have an unique way of working – they are incredibly close, so much so that they stand on stage playing games with each other, devising little bits of the show – and they might as well be on their own. As you watch them create a piece of theatre, you realise they create, rehearse, create, rehearse.

This is how it has been thus far, but with the addition of the newer collaborators, Rash Dash is expanding.

The Ugly Sisters, the latest show that receives it premiere tonight at West Yorkshire Playhouse, sees Rash Dash working with an outside director for the first time. The show, a re-telling of Cinderella from a different point of view, was first seen in an embryonic form two years ago at West Yorkshire Playhouse at a launch event for a festival of new work.

It was then turned into a show that was taken to Edinburgh and is now being re-worked as a new piece to be presented tomorrow night.

“We can’t really tell how we’re doing from the outside, because we’re just making the work,” says Greenland of the company that is building an impressive reputation in the theatre world.

“But this is the first time we’ve worked with a director and having the band play live on stage is pretty exciting. That’s a sort of marker.”

A mixture of cabaret, music gig, dance and physical theatre, The Ugly Sisters is going to be what the marketers call “a theatrical experience” and what Rash Dash call “a piece of theatre that everyone will like – because it’s just got so much in it”.

It’s a confidence the young company has earned.

Fresh angle on a classic story

The Ugly Sisters tells the true story of the most notorious villains in fairytale history.
 Influenced by the Object report in 2011 following the Leveson enquiry, 
Rash Dash’s daring interpretation of Cinderella explores themes of objectification and sexism in the media, using an exhilirating mix of live music, story and physical theatre 
to expose the ugly truth behind the fame story of the siblings.

The Ugly Sisters, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Sept 13,14, tickets 0113 213 7700. Then touring Sheffield, Barnsley, Hull, full details www.rashdash.co.uk