BAD CINDERELLA
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Book by Emerald Fennell
(Adaptation by Alexis Scheer)
Lyrics by David Zippel
Imperial Theatre
Reviewed by David Spencer
Bad Cinderella—Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest—is worse than you might imagine, even from the jokes about Bad having been added to its US title as a warning; and the not-quite-solid wall of reviews as willing to enable it. And that’s because of all the ramifications attached to the enterprise. It’s an inevitability that there would be a new millennium version of the famous fairy tale that’s written for woke-ness, cast for diversity and spring-loaded for inclusiveness to burst out from around any corner. (For example: A surprise gay Prince and the even more surprisingly tolerant evil Queen—yes, I know how that sounds, and you can bet the creative team—which includes lyricist David Zippel and librettists Emerald Fennell & Alexis Scheer—do too).
But nothing that gets created in the service of of marketplace targeting, rather than out of love—or out of a creative challenge that, as problem-solving reveals the project’s heart, leads to love—can hide the tells of pandering.
The problem with a rebellious Cinderella who begins the story with agency and attitude…is that she’s no longer Cinderella; she can solve her problems without help and you don’t buy it when she goes seeking help she doesn’t need.
The problem with a morality tale about the importance of inner beauty set in outer-beauty-obsessed Belleville (tell me this isn’t a veiled swipe at Disney’s Beauty and the Beast) is that Cinderella, for dramatic contrast, must be objectively unattractive—but of course ALW won’t have that, so Linedy Genao as Cinderella is as pretty as can be, save that she dresses like a female Davy Crockett—which means her biggest societal problem is a renegade fashion sense.
Which means, right from the start, we’re being lied to.
The dishonesty of the foundation is why everything else in the show—dance, design, amplification—works so hard, so aggressively, so relentlessly, ultimately also so futilely, to compensate for it. And symbolizing that effort, Bad Cinderella is also the unequivocally muggiest show I have ever seen. Actors’ faces go through as as many seemingly choreographed and micro-managed moves as dancers’ bodies. Even the brilliant Carolee Carmello, justly famous for being able to make anything work—can’t camouflage our seeing how much craft goes into maintaining her balance as Cindy’s catty stepmother within director Lawrence Connor’s Thud School of Comedy. In such ways, Bad Cinderella manages to be dull and exhausting at the same time.
I’m not sure I can say that I’ve never seen the a musical so dedicated to sensory overload…but never on this scale. (Somehow I managed to miss Starlight Express, so I lack that one as a barometer.)
I don’t have any strong feelings about the score one way or the other. I found it tuneful, as ALW music tends to be, but also evanescent—gone from memory the next day—which is what his music also tends to be when it sounds like he’s not giving it his best shot. But I’d suggest that your best shot, if interested, would be to purchase the CD and leave it at that.