The story works best for both Cinderella and Sebastian when they just, well, let it go-he with a solo number, “Only You, Lonely You,” that’s the best in show and the most Lloyd Webber of Lloyd Webbery ballads-with deranged, soaring chords, rousingly declaring his love for his pal Cinders. Cinderella, at this point, has apparently swallowed this baloney, despite being her also, minutes earlier, having no truck with it. So, Cinderella hands it over, the two of them singing a song called “Beauty Has a Price,” again underscoring Bad Cinderella’s seeming desire to say something about our society’s obsession with beauty. Here, the Godmother (Christina Acosta Robinson) offers Cinderella the chance to look great if the Godmother acquires a much-treasured family necklace. The show also leaves in odd stasis its focus on the shallowness of physical appearance and looks. But the lyrics never quite sharpen enough, and the song never quite hits its target, despite the jiggery-campery that Carmello and McLean play it with. Carmello and McLean are accorded a potential jewel of a duet, “I Know You,” which is a kind of diva face-off, both women making clear they know each other from back in the day of working in places of shadowy repute. So often in this show, some scene sprouts up, and you think: Oh, this could be interesting only for it to fizzle away. They, like most of the characters, should be more fun than they are. The stepmother wants the best for her selfish self, and two daughters, Adele (Sami Gayle) and Marie (Morgan Higgins), who seem to be channeling shallow Valley Girls. You can’t blame me for everything you know. Stepmother: “I can’t take all the credit for that.
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Indeed, when Cinderella finally tells her what she thinks of her, it is the stepmother’s retort that earns the bigger cheer-which is the canniest turn of storytelling in the script.Ĭinderella: “The only thing I ever learned from you, dear Stepmother, is how to be a completely heartless bitch.” “Why be enemies when you’re so completely expert at sabotaging yourself!” her stepmother tells Cinderella, and vile as she is, she ain’t wrong. Carolee Carmello as the evil Stepmother brews her malevolence with acid relish, and oddly-as cruel as she is to Cinderella-at least makes us understand why she is so evil. Genao and Dobson valiantly do all they can with these characters, but are trapped by the flat imagining of them, and all the worthy goody two-shoes-ness that they are saddled with. By the end, after the zillionth, wailing power ballad by Cinderella (“Far Too Late”-what an unintentionally accurate song title), your nails will be leaving scores in your seat wishing the whole damn thing would just end. Her and Sebastian’s initially interesting, spiky independence and friendship is soon diluted into an un-engaging, interminable love story. Her boundary-breaking reputation is not matched by anything we see on stage. We never hear her say anything that radical, or upend any traditional order of anything-gender, or power, or cultural expectation. We keep waiting to see Cinderella sock it to someone, or rebel, but we never see her do anything badass at all. He mopes like no one else, and his and Cinderella’s downcast, over-it demeanors kill every ounce of life of the scenes they are in. He doesn’t want to rule over anything, or marry anyone. Sebastian is Prince Charming’s brother, and as down on the shallowness of his mother, the queen (Grace McLean) and court life as Cinderella is. These whining characters deserve each other, but not for the reasons the show intends.
As a character she swaggers and stomps around and looks angry, but she’s a victim-y drip at heart, albeit one dressed in a cool jacket and tight trousers. The story isn’t that much changed, despite the insistence that Bad Cinderella is a punk and rebel. This Cinderella (Linedy Genao in her Broadway debut she writes in the production Playbill that she is the first Latina performer to originate a leading role in a Lloyd Webber musical) and her true love Prince Sebastian (Jordan Dobson) are modern-ish facsimiles of fairly traditional characters. The title of the musical is a nonsense and marketing stunt-in London’s West End the same show was called Cinderella, and with more honest reason. 23) the nagging question is: what makes this Cinderella “bad” in any interesting, intriguing, meaningfully different way? The answer: not much. All through Andrew Lloyd Webber’s inane mish-mash of a Broadway musical Bad Cinderella (Imperial Theatre, booking to Sept.
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