Matthew Bourne has set his Cinderella in the year 1940, with London under attack from Hitler’s bombers, the blackout in force, and Londoners seizing what moments of happiness they can among the carnage and destruction.

This is a dark telling of the tale; dark, too, in Lez Brotherston’s marvellous night-time designs of a shattered London, its nightclubs, tube-station refuges, and Paddington station, from which the couple leave for a new life together.

Bourne’s love of old film musicals is clear as Cinderella descends a long, curved staircase to perform a ‘Fred and Ginger’ style dance with the Pilot, who in this story replaces the Prince. The historic destruction of the underground Café de Paris by a freak bomb down an air-vent, is marvellously done. It begins with a tableau of the dead dancers draped over the ruins, and then scrolls back and miraculously re-assembles the club, bringing the dancers to life again. It’s a real coup-de-theatre from Brotherston.

The story is essentially the same. Kerry Biggin is Cinderella, dowdy and bespectacled, bossed not only by her stepmother and stepsisters, but with three stepbrothers, one of whom is tall and very creepy and fancies her. Instead of a Fairy Godmother there is a male Angel in a shiny white suit, beautifully danced by Christopher Marney. He it is who leads Cinderella through the dark, wrecked streets, evading gangs of gas-masked yobbos, until he delivers her to the dance in the side-car of a white motorcycle combination.

Biggin is, as usual, touching, but now seems a little mature for the vulnerable young Cinderella. It would be interesting to see one of the other two dancers who play the role. Sam Archer is dashing as the wounded pilot who appears at the door. He is quite a catch with his snazzy uniform and toothbrush moustache. Cinderella’s unfortunate father (Paul Smethurst) is in a wheelchair. The war, we surmise, has done this to him. Though he is near comatose much of the time, there is a lovely duet as his daughter dances with and around him, and another imaginative duet for Cinderella and the Pilot, when she begins dancing with a uniform on a tailor’s dummy, but in her imagination brings him to life. Here their love is expressed in a long and lyrical sequence with a real feeling of passion to it. There is a lot of dancing throughout this work, but not many dances that convey the emotions of the characters. All the same, it’s a terrific show.

Until Saturday. Tickets: www.newtheatreoxford.org.uk or 0844 8471588.