They have a point: Gabriela Tylesova’s costumes and Luc Verschueren’s wigs turn Genao into Courtney Love from her grunge period, which could be considered hip if we were seeing “Bad Cinderella” in the year 1993 and not 2023. The townspeople hate her because she’s not pretty. This bad Cinderella begins promisingly as a kind of Banksy artist who goes around defacing royal statues in her beauty-obsessed village. Lloyd Webber and Zippel have far more trouble writing anything memorable for their pouty heroine, her big female empowerment anthem given the generic title “Cinderella’s Soliloquy.” But Genao delivers it with all the alarm-bell power that aficionados of “Defying Gravity” and “Let It Go” have come to honor with an immediate ovation.Īaron Sorkin Recovering After Suffering Stroke in 2022: ‘A Loud Wakeup Call’ In “Bad Cinderella,” the Act 2 opening ballet, “The Wedding March,” is right out of a Lehár operetta, and the contest of one-upsmanship “I Know You” between the Queen (a ditsy Grace McLean) and the Stepmother (a strident Carolee Carmello) is a novel spin on “I Remember It Well” from Lerner and Loewe’s “Gigi.” With songs like “Memory” from “Cats” and now “Only You, Lonely You,” this composer writes music that circumvents the brain to go straight to the heart. Critics have never embraced his music, but audiences appreciate the melodic tradition he represents, Lloyd Webber being the last survivor of an unabashed romanticism that goes back to Frederick Loewe, Franz Lehar and Giacomo Puccini. Lloyd Webber and Zippel write them like they used to. He is meant to be a joke – and the only one in this show that manages to deliver a long, sustained roar of laughter from the audience.Īndrew Lloyd Webber’s Son ‘Critically Ill,’ Composer to Miss ‘Bad Cinderella’ Broadway Opening This season, Broadway is playing catch-up with major queer characters in “& Juliet” and “Some Like It Hot” and now “Bad Cinderella.” The difference with Loyal’s Prince Charming is that he’s not some pathetic trope created to make us weep for his plight in life. If you don’t count Bobby in “Company,” there is only one in Stephen Sondheim’s oeuvre, and he is the supporting character of Hollis Bessemer in “Road Show,” the master’s last fully completed musical. Despite musicals being the great gay art form, there have been precious few queer characters who sing for our pleasure in the standard repertory of tuners. It has been quite a season on Broadway for LGBTQ characters. Oh yes, and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the music. And in the person of Cameron Loyal, who makes an outrageous Broadway debut here, this god is a hilarious send-up of overripe gay male porn stars. Surprisingly, for a show based on the Cinderella fairy tale, he is named Prince Charming. The deus ex machina is alive and well, and when he appears out of nowhere near the end of “Bad Cinderella,” he nearly rescues this troubled new musical that opened Thursday at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre.
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