Having been unexpectedly delighted by the Royal Ballet’s revival of Christopher Wheeldon’s Corybantic Games at Covent Garden last week, I slapped my wrists for underrating him as a prolific craftsman. After a second exposure to his Cinderella, handsomely mounted by English National Ballet at the Royal Albert Hall, I have reverted to that ho-hum view.

Clearly feeling he needed to excavate something different out of a familiar tale and Prokofiev’s score, Wheeldon commissioned the help of the playwright Craig Lucas in constructing a new scenario that removes most of the fantasy and attempts to establish some psychologically realistic back story. A wasted effort.

The stepsisters become neither ugly nor malicious, merely dimwits. Like Siegfried in Swan Lake (or possibly Rudolf in Mayerling), the prince is feeling parental pressure to grow up and make adult choices. Instead of being enabled by a Fairy Godmother with a magic wand, Cinderella is carried along by four figures of fate, who seem fugitives from one of Pina Bausch’s gloomier expressionistic lucubrations. There’s no transformation from scullery waif to supermodel or pumpkin to coach: Cinderella arrives at the ball in a rather ordinary frock.

All this serves to weaken the message that the meek shall inherit the Earth if only they give the odd crust to the poor and hang on in there. Cinderella is no longer the embodiment of virtue downtrodden, just another girl with dreams above her station, so why should we care? One is left wondering quite what the prince sees in her, beyond the right shoe size. The ‘original’ Perrault plot carries far more emotional resonance.

But it’s a gorgeous show nevertheless, and English National Ballet does it proud in this spectacular arena staging. Julian Crouch’s designs combine projections of all manner of palatial magnificence with costumes of lavish splendour, deep blue and furry, snowy white predominating their palette. I couldn’t fathom what Basil Twist’s nightmare puppet figures were doing in this context, but they add to the parade of wonders, as does an enormous chandelier that would grace the ceilings of Mar-a-Lago.

An expanded corps de ballet had been very well drilled and Wheeldon arranges its members in pleasing symmetries that have a grand effect. But the soloists struggled to make much impact in such an expanse: in the title-role, Erina Takahashi seemed a sweet pretty thing, no more. Best of the rest by a country mile was Francesco Gabriele Frola whose intricate second act solo as the prince was a highlight of otherwise bland choreography short of both high romance and diamantine sparkle.

Prokofiev’s music was honoured by a live orchestra under Gavin Sutherland, playing remotely and amplified. Was a second interval necessary? A packed hall was royally entertained, but no heartstrings were tugged.

More escapism is on offer at Sadler’s Wells, where a production of 42nd Street originating at the Curve, Leicester has landed for the summer. This is a tap-danced Broadway musical that draws on all the hoariest myths about Broadway musicals (the show must go on, the understudy who goes out a nobody and comes back a star and so forth), with a juke-box score made up from hit songs written in the 1930s by Harry Warren and Al Dubin.

Nicole-Lily Baisden is enchanting as the girl from the boondocks seeking her big chance, and Sam Lips also impresses as the jeune premier. Both can sing as well as they hoof. The nominal stars of the show – Ruthie Henshall, Josefina Gabrielle, Adam Garcia and Les Dennis – make a rather pallid impression in comparison, but the chorines are terrific, tapping up a cracking storm in the big numbers, ingeniously arranged by Bill Deamer. It’s wafer-thin stuff, but utterly innocuous and jolly good fun.