THE version of Cinderella by the Royal Ballet of Flanders, in the Belfast Festival at Queens until Saturday is strong enough on comedy to serve as an early Christmas panto. Not only Messrs Gideon Louw and Eric Bortolin's Ugly Sisters, but also the Prince, a Dancing Master and sundry dressmakers, jewellers, cavaliers and ladies all raised laughs from the full Grand Opera House on Wednesday night.

The production has a charming and technically proficient Cinderella in Aysem Sunal (seen in Belfast in 1994 as Giselle), finely partnered by Rinat Imaev (seen in 1994 as Albrecht). Prokofiev's attractive Cinderella score is augmented by his Love Of Three Oranges (while the eponymous fruit is offered as a love token in the ballroom scene) and is well played by the Ulster Orchestra under Koen Kassels. Peter Anastos's choreography, however, does not always match movement to score. Dramatic music is wedded to pretty divertissements and jouettes are unhappily executed to a hastily speeded up waltz. He also allows divertissements to overwhelm plot like speciality acts in a panto.

Roger Bermard's decor, costumes and lighting seem to sabotage each other, with black costumes merging with black settings in the ballroom and the floor taped like a stage manager's rehearsal markings, while his giant kitchen fireplace, festooned with candles like a shrine, did nothing to counteract the choreography's lack of magic when it split down the middle laboriously to reveal an uninspiring night sky at the wave of the Fairy Godmother's wand. Nor is plot development logical, Cinderella's sudden act of defiance in throwing the washing into the fire, for instance, going apparently unnoticed by her sisters. A pity, for this company is strong in male dancers and there was fine work from soloists of both sexes.