“It’s a tough version of a tough story,” the playwright Nancy Harris told The Irish Times earlier this month. “The point of fairy tales is that they build resilience.” Just in time for the holidays, Harris has adapted The Red Shoes, Hans Christian Andersen’s 1845 cautionary tale, for the stage. While the Powell and Pressburger ballet film of 1948 will always be the gold standard, the immortal story bears repeating. Harris’s version is about a young girl who loses her mother and is adopted. When gifted with a new pair of red shoes, she’s reluctant to take them off—until they begin carrying her to places she does not wish to go. In Harris’s contemporary retelling for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the tale is brought to life by the dancer Nikki Cheung in the lead role. Kimberley Rampersad directs. —Jeanne Malle