J.M. Barrie, the immortal mind behind Peter Pan, reimagines Cinderella for a world scarred by war. In this witty 1920 comedy, a London domestic named Jane spends her days scrubbing floors and caring for four tiny orphans in a grim tenement. But when the lights go out and the children sleep, she becomes something else entirely: Cinderella, dreaming of the ball she'll never attend, of a prince who might be waiting just beyond the fog. Then a wounded soldier appears at her door, amnesiac and desperate, and Jane must decide whether the fairy tale she's built in her head can survive the messy reality of love. Barrie's genius lies in the twist: this isn't a story about escape from poverty, but about how imagination itself becomes a form of resistance, how a woman with nothing can still create magic. The play hums with Barrie's signature tenderness and his refusal to let hard truths flatten hard-won hope. It's a small, perfect thing: a wartime comedy that laughs at tragedy and means it.
