Review: The Ugly Sisters, West Yorkshire Playhouse

Presented in an energetic, anarchic cabaret style with Abbi Greenland and Helen Goalen as the Ugly Sisters (“we’re reclaiming the word!”) addressing the audience directly, the piece aims to set the record straight as Pearl and Emerald relate their version of events.

Greenland and Goalen, the duo who graduated Hull University before coming to Leeds to set up Rash Dash, are ably assisted in this by their three-piece band Not Now Bernard. Their punchy, punky songs add an extra layer of humour and energy to the proceedings – each band member also takes part in the action at various points playing the girls’ hard-working mother Ruby, Prince Charming and stepsister Arabella.

As the sisters tell their story – from the poignant description of their deprived but loving childhood to the arrival of their precocious stepsister Arabella (aka Cinderella) and the consequent disruption of the girls’ relationship with their mother to their participation in TV reality show You Shall Go to the Ball! – assumptions and prejudices are upturned.

The narrative crafted by the pair deliberately has plenty to say about modern society, taking in celebrity culture, gender stereotyping, media distortion and body image using storytelling, song – both Goalen and Greenland have excellent singing voices – and well-executed dance sequences.

It is riotously funny, irreverent and, at times, very moving.

This is about as far away from Disney as you can get, much darker in tone – as fairytales are meant to be – with some profoundly disturbing truths at its heart and a devastating twist in its tail.

Sheffield Crucible, Oct 5, Hull Truck Theatre, Oct 10, Theatre Royal, Wakefield, Nov 6, Barnsley Civic, Nov 9.