Evan Zimmerman
All via Andrew Lloyd Webber’s inane mish-mash of a Broadway musical Dangerous Cinderella (Imperial Theatre, reserving to Sept. 23) the nagging query is: what makes this Cinderella “dangerous” in any fascinating, intriguing, meaningfully completely different method? The reply: not a lot. The title of the musical is a nonsense and advertising stunt—in London’s West Finish the identical present was referred to as Cinderella, and with extra trustworthy cause.
This Cinderella (Linedy Genao in her Broadway debut; she writes within the manufacturing Playbill that she is the primary Latina performer to originate a number one position in a Lloyd Webber musical) and her real love Prince Sebastian (Jordan Dobson) are modern-ish facsimiles of pretty conventional characters. The story isn’t that a lot modified, regardless of the insistence that Dangerous Cinderella is a punk and insurgent.
She actually isn’t. As a personality she swaggers and stomps round and appears offended, however she’s a victim-y drip at coronary heart, albeit one wearing a cool jacket and tight trousers. So is Sebastian. These whining characters deserve one another, however not for the explanations the present intends.
What a wierd mess. Dangerous Cinderella seems to be low-cost, with wobbling, fragile-looking set ornament, extra akin to a British pantomime than Broadway present. And the present (with a ebook by the multi-award-winning Emerald Fennell), regardless of all its Lloyd Webber melodies and acquainted setups that hark to so a lot of his earlier musicals, seems like an old-school pantomime; its comedy and villains and mugging to the viewers are straight from that venerable British Christmas theatrical custom. It desires to be each archly modern and fairytale-fantastical, and tumbles bizarrely into the abyss between each. (Lloyd Webber’s seventy fifth birthday was very sweetly marked by the solid on the finish of Wednesday night time’s efficiency; he was set to be absent from Thursday’s opening night time due to his critically ailing son.)
The present begins promisingly, with a statue of the allegedly lifeless (spoiler: he isn’t) Prince Charming (Cameron Loyal), with some pink graffiti scrawled over it: “Magnificence sucks.” That is the work of the as-yet-unseen “Dangerous Cinderella,” and right here within the city of Belleville set in a sort of traditionally non-specific blur of previous and current, a gap quantity outlines that magnificence is the whole lot. Wanting good and being wealthy, are the important thing metrics of success and achievement (the most effective bit, a shirtless stud of a baker promising “Scorching buns”). Cinderella, realizing venality and extreme vainness for what they're, is accountable for the graffiti. Gosh, what an fascinating new sort of Cinderella we're about to fulfill! If solely.
Linedy Genao and Jordan Dobson in 'Dangerous Cinderella.'
Evan Zimmerman
Sebastian is Prince Charming’s brother, and as down on the vanity of his mom, the queen (Grace McLean) and court docket life as Cinderella is. He doesn’t need to rule over something, or marry anybody. He mopes like nobody else, and his and Cinderella’s downcast, over-it demeanors kill each ounce of lifetime of the scenes they're in. We maintain ready to see Cinderella sock it to somebody, or insurgent, however we by no means see her do something badass in any respect. We by no means hear her say something that radical, or upend any conventional order of something—gender, or energy, or cultural expectation. Her boundary-breaking repute is just not matched by something we see on stage.
Her and Sebastian’s initially fascinating, spiky independence and friendship is quickly diluted into an un-engaging, interminable love story. She loves him, he loves her. They don’t inform one another. She thinks he’s gotten married. He hasn’t. By the top, after the zillionth, wailing energy ballad by Cinderella (“Far Too Late”—what an unintentionally correct track title), your nails can be leaving scores in your seat wishing the entire rattling factor would simply finish. Genao and Dobson valiantly do all they'll with these characters, however are trapped by the flat imagining of them, and all of the worthy goody two-shoes-ness that they're saddled with.
There may be some enjoyable available within the present. Carolee Carmello because the evil Stepmother brews her malevolence with acid relish, and oddly—as merciless as she is to Cinderella—at the very least makes us perceive why she is so evil. “Why be enemies once you’re so fully professional at sabotaging your self!” her stepmother tells Cinderella, and vile as she is, she ain’t flawed.
Certainly, when Cinderella lastly tells her what she thinks of her, it's the stepmother’s retort that earns the larger cheer—which is the canniest flip of storytelling within the script.
Cinderella: “The one factor I ever realized from you, pricey Stepmother, is be a totally heartless bitch.”
Stepmother: “I can’t take all of the credit score for that. You’re a pure. You may’t blame me for the whole lot you recognize. You probably did all of the arduous work...”
The stepmother desires the most effective for her egocentric self, and two daughters, Adele (Sami Gayle) and Marie (Morgan Higgins), who appear to be channeling shallow Valley Ladies. They, like many of the characters, needs to be extra enjoyable than they're. So typically on this present, some scene sprouts up, and also you assume: Oh, this could possibly be fascinating just for it to fizzle away. Carmello and McLean are accorded a possible jewel of a duet, “I Know You,” which is a sort of diva face-off, each girls making clear they know one another from again within the day of working in locations of shadowy reputation. However the lyrics by no means fairly sharpen sufficient, and the track by no means fairly hits its goal, regardless of the jiggery-campery that Carmello and McLean play it with.
Carolee Carmello in 'Dangerous Cinderella.'
Evan Zimmerman
The present additionally leaves in odd stasis its give attention to the vanity of bodily look and appears. Right here, the Godmother (Christina Acosta Robinson) affords Cinderella the prospect to look nice if the Godmother acquires a much-treasured household necklace. So, Cinderella fingers it over, the 2 of them singing a track referred to as “Magnificence Has a Value,” once more underscoring Dangerous Cinderella’s seeming need to say one thing about our society’s obsession with magnificence. Cinderella, at this level, has apparently swallowed this baloney, regardless of being her additionally, minutes earlier, having no truck with it.
The story works greatest for each Cinderella and Sebastian once they simply, effectively, let it go—he with a solo quantity, “Solely You, Lonely You,” that’s the most effective in present and essentially the most Lloyd Webber of Lloyd Webbery ballads—with deranged, hovering chords, rousingly declaring his love for his pal Cinders. Later, he asserts himself with the bro-ish hunky lackeys of her brother (lastly), incomes extra cheers, and even dances, shrugging all of the moping off. Extra cheers. (Producers, there’s a message right here—do one thing extra fascinating along with your two lead characters!)
Alongside the plodding “June/”moon” rhyming lyrics of the songs, the storytelling within the present is strewn with holes and contradictions. The sweetness-isn’t-everything message is just not the middle of the present. It form of drifts across the narrative, and is then misplaced. The reclamation of the necklace is one other dead-end, as are the well-known glass slippers of the story, that are necessary, then not that necessary. Cinderella is informed, as ordinary, she have to be dwelling by midnight, however nothing in the end occurs with that.
Most clearly, Cinderella and Sebastian are each objectively enticing individuals, who will not be precisely busting any magnificence conventions by their presence. Additionally, allow us to name time on each theater present, movie, and TV program that bangs on concerning the shallowness of magnificence, and the way actual magnificence lies inside, when all are initiatives born of an business—leisure—the place seems to be are a key part of who will get solid in no matter roles, together with the roles inside this present. The hand-wringing and hypocrisy of this messaging is laughable and absurd.
The ensemble of 'Dangerous Cinderella.'
Evan Zimmerman
Past that, in Dangerous Cinderella, the makeover given to Cinderella is appalling. She seems to be worse after it, with a frumpy, glittery white costume and lank grey-white hair. It’s like a kind of TV-makeovers-gone-wrong the place you assume: They positively appeared higher earlier than.
And anyway, regardless of all its facile, half-hearted jabs at a shallow obsession with bodily aesthetics, the present is all about seems to be—proudly. It continually requires its firm of male dancers to point out off their our bodies for the pleasure of the viewers. They usually certainly do, exhibiting their our bodies in essentially the most great, peacock-ish method doable—the viewers on the night time this critic attended went wild for the dancers, whose bombastic numbers like “Hunk’s Tune” and “Man’s Man,” as they posed, preened, and labored out on fitness center tools, have been among the many hits of the night time. They actually injected some life into the flatlining tundra of the central heterosexual love story.
Later, the most important cheers will not be for Cinderella and Sebastian lastly getting it collectively because the stage curtain fell, however for the well-executed shock of Prince Charming’s return from the lifeless—to proclaim his love for his homosexual real love, and for them to be married. The twinned emphasis on his wonderful physique and on celebrating same-sex love was greeted with a storm of applause and cheers. This was a raucously, brilliantly staged second with actual coronary heart.
Not so the ultimate union of Cinderella and Sebastian, which takes place, bizarrely, simply because the curtain descends in a sort of rush. Sure, the viewers is joyful to see it, however they have been audibly method happier with the gay-themed love-fest of moments earlier.
Dangerous Cinderella isn’t a radical transforming of Cinderella; it isn’t a reimagining, feminist or in any other case, of the prisons of femininity, social conference, and energy. There are such a lot of prospects of radicalism within the narrative—Cinderella slyly undermining these she serves; Cinderella and Sebastian themselves rejecting the conventions that encompass them; each of them questioning their roles, sexuality, gender id, or being single or simply associates on the finish, off to see the world; a deeper dive into the evil stepmother’s early years on the opposite facet of the tracks; even a real deconstruction of the obsession with magnificence.
The story nods in a few of these instructions, virtually as if ticking bins of what is perhaps anticipated of an up to date Cinderella. Then, in a short time, it plumps for essentially the most imprisoning, standard story arcs—leaving Cinderella, Dangerous or perhaps simply Moody, unmoored from her personal story. She, and Genao, deserve method higher.