How Ballet Shoes became a timeless story about the power of choosing your family

In tremendously bright blue tutus and leotards, the cast of Ballet Shoes weave through the aisles before the show. They stretch and twirl like overgrown children, inviting the audience to join in with a few moves. In the circle, to the left of the stage, a young Black boy beams as he confidently joins the tutu-clad dancers, mirroring their movements with glee.

The boy had sat behind me earlier at a panel event hosted for families of adopted children, organised by charity Coram alongside the National Theatre. His mother had shared her challenges in navigating her son’s dreams about his birth family, who he imagines to be rockstars or heroes. 

Ballet Shoes conjures a fairytale world where dreams come true, but it is also grounded in the ordinary struggles of life. It is about a wonderfully unconventional family – three baby girls are adopted by an absent-minded palaeontologist who habitually disappears on scientific quests, leaving them in the hands of their young guardian and her childhood nanny.

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They live in an enormous house full of fossils but their money runs out and they have to take on a host of lodgers to keep afloat, while the girls dream of dancing on stage, acting in Hollywood and flying aeroplanes. It pushed boundaries when Noel Streatfeild’s novel was published in 1936, a decade after adoption was legalised, and its message remains powerful today.

“There’s a universality of the subject, with these young adopted children trying to work out who they are in this world and finding a family,” says Katy Rudd, who directs the National Theatre production of Ballet Shoes, at the panel event. “Remarkably, this was written in the 30s and the nuclear family was a thing. It was sort of revolutionary. 

“The novel is saying it’s OK if your family doesn’t look like something that’s conventional, and that still resonates today – those feelings of trying to find out who you are, find your people, find your family, and find the love and support of the people you live with.”

The National Theatre has taken a modern twist on Ballet Shoes. It is still set in the 30s, but the costumes and the set feel almost timeless. There are brilliant bursts of colour throughout the production, matching the girls’ zest for life, as the audience is transported into their world.

And some of the themes within the book have been brought into the foreground for the 21st century. Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes included a lesbian character, for example. She has a female companion, incredible for a children’s book at the time, but her sexuality is never named. In the National Theatre production, this character is open about her identity.

Initially seen by the girls as a crusty old professor, she opens up about the love of her life, a maths professor, who has died. She is not considered to be her partner’s family as she is not a blood relation, and it was illegal for two women to marry, so she lost their home and was left with little to her name. She has no option but to become a lodger, living among the fossils with the girls and their guardians, where she discovers an extraordinary new family.

“In queer communities, found families are often hugely important, and so it made it have even more impact and strength in the story,” Rudd says. “It’s really hard when you’re making an adaptation. A lot of people love the story and get very tempered about it. Even the poster, people were cross about. 

“It’s a huge responsibility to deliver that story and those characters and the feeling of it, but I felt like Noel Streatfeild – who was an actor and went to RADA – had this sort of anarchy about her. She had this spirit, and I thought: ‘She would do it.’ So I pushed things, and that felt right for our story.”

The cast of Ballet Shoes is also racially diverse, including the three girls. “I wanted the audience to see themselves,” Rudd adds. “It’s hugely important that young people, especially, see themselves reflected in the casting. It’s a diverse cast, who bring different cultural heritages and experiences.”

Of course, there are elements of the story which feel too good to be true, with everything tied up in a neat package of happily ever after – but isn’t it nice to see a story where poverty and trauma are not exploited and instead the girls are allowed to live out their dreams?

It is probably because of its innocent hopefulness that Streatfeild’s novel has a timeless popularity. It was adapted into a film in 2007, with its stars including Emma Watson, Emilia Fox and Richard Griffiths, while the book remains a classic. Rudd read it growing up, but she hadn’t thought about it for years until playwright Kendall Feaver suggested it should be their next project. 

She recalled it being about strong women, and an image of the girls growing up in a house with dinosaur bones had stuck in her head, which gave them a rich playground to tell the story on the stage. And yet despite the room for exploration, this is the first major stage adaptation of Ballet Shoes.

“There’s something about girls’ books that can be apparently off-putting. But girls’ stories are really important, and I think they’re also not just for girls. Each of the girls are encouraged to find their own passion, and it’s not all about ballet. It’s about cars and flying and aeroplanes. I hope what we have achieved and shown is that ballet is for everyone and that this story is for everyone,” Rudd says.

So as a young boy dances alongside the ensemble of Ballet Shoes with happiness radiating from him, I think to myself that the team at the National Theatre has achieved exactly what they intended before the show has even begun. And, quite possibly, they are inspiring a new generation of children with big dreams.

The National Theatre is working with Coram to offer discounted tickets to members of the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies who will reach out to adoptive families across the country to see the show. BalletShoes runs until 22 February.

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