Is it too late to rename the show “Great Stepmother?”
Not that the stepmother in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical is virtuous, not by any means. But thanks to three-time Tony nominee Carolee Carmello’s uproarious performance, she becomes the dominant force in Bad Cinderella.
It’s one of the few saving graces of this campy exercise in fairy tale exhumation which inexplicably received favorable reviews in its original London incarnation but will require a genuine Fairy Godmother to make its spell last longer than midnight on Broadway.
It’s hard to know exactly to whom the show is pitched, except perhaps bachelorette groups or their male equivalents who are bored with Chippendales. Indeed, there are so many hunky shirtless men parading around the Imperial Theatre you think the show marks the return of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, minus Charles Ludlam’s wit. There’s even a lengthy scene featuring them fencing while bare-chested, because everyone knows that when you’re fencing you want to expose as much skin as possible.
The sophomoric book is credited to Emerald Fennell, who won an Academy Award for Promising Young Woman and seems intent here on belying that film’s title. Alexis Scheer is credited with “Book Adaptation” on the program’s title page and “Additional Book Material” in the bios, so it’s anyone’s guess what she actually contributed. The musical’s title seems to refer to the fact that Cinderella (Linedy Genao, underwhelming in what should have been a breakout turn) is introduced while defacing a statue of Prince Charming. She’s also rather petulant, but “Petulant Cinderella” but wouldn’t look as catchy on the marquee. In any case, the character doesn’t make any sense. Nor is she appealing, which presumably explains why she disappears for long stretches in a musical revolving around her.
Since Prince Charming has disappeared and is presumed dead, the next in line to the throne is the hapless Prince Sebastian (Jordan Dobson, recently seen in A Beautiful Noise), apparently a childhood friend of Cinderella’s (you’d think they would have traveled in different circles). They live in the town of Belleville, ruled by the maniacal Queen (Grace McLean, another bright spot in the show) and populated by lots of beautiful people looking like they do their clothes shopping at Frederick’s of Hollywood.
“Every single citizen’s a cut and chiseled god/Beauty is our duty/Everyone among us has a ripped and rockin’ bod,” they sing in the opening number featuring a tight-trousered male baker boasting about his “hot buns.”
Naturally, Cinderella doesn’t exactly get along with her domineering stepmother (Carmello, the show’s MVP) or her two stepsisters (Sami Gayle, Morgan Higgins) who look like they’ve stepped out of Vanderpump Rules. The stepmother and the Queen seem to have shared some sort of checkered past, as not too subtly hinted at in the amusing song “I Know You.” That number, incidentally, constitutes one of the show’s highlights, as it allows Carmello and McLean to let it rip with the sort of comic gusto suggesting they know they’ve got some heavy lifting to do to keep the show running.
There is, of course, the Godmother (Christina Acosta Robinson, somehow maintaining her dignity), a plastic surgeon (what?!?!) who transforms Cinderella into Storm from the X-Men, or at least that’s what she looks like. And, spoiler alert, Prince Charming returns near the show’s end, making it very clear that he has no interest in marrying…a woman, at least. He’s played by Cameron Loyal, who packs so many muscles on top of muscles that you fear the stage will buckle under his weight.
Webber displays little of his gift for melody, purloined or otherwise, in the blandly generic score, which features enough power ballads to stop the show dead so many times the stagehands should be equipped with defibrillators. Weirdly, many of them are sung with the stage turntable in constant rotation, as if the performers were attempting to get as many steps in as possible. Of course, they may also be trying to outrun the atrocious lyrics by David Zippel, by now making it clear that his superb work for City of Angels is but a distant memory. On the other hand, you have to admire his chutzpah, if not sophistication, in rhyming “Cinderella” with “salmonella.”
So relentlessly vulgar and campy that it would make Ron DeSantis’ head explode (now there’s a pull quote), Bad Cinderella is the sort of terrible show whose defenders would describe it as “fun,” as if anyone looking for genuine quality in a Broadway musical for which tickets costs hundreds of dollars is a cranky spoilsport. The sheer cynicism of the entire enterprise, designed to capitalize on the public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for irreverent fairy tale adaptations, is enough to turn a carriage into a pumpkin.
Bad Cinderella opened March 23, 2023, at the Imperial Theatre. Tickets and information: badcinderellabroadway.com
