Bad Cinderella Review: When a Fairy Tale Boldly Rejects Beauty, Taste
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s bawdy new musical forgets the key lessons of the original.
Cinderella (Linedy Genao) is caught by the townspeople for her crime of defacing a statue of Prince Charming.
Photographers: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
The creators behind the new musical Bad Cinderella were at least clever about one thing: They claimed the word “bad” as their own before it could be used against them. Handily, there are many other useful terms to describe the production: “prurient,” “ill-conceived,” “nonsensical,” “overlong” and “icky.”
Let’s start with the icky, since the show certainly does. Transferred from London’s West End to Broadway, Bad Cinderella—directed by Laurence Connor, with a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber, a book by Emerald Fennell (A Promising Young Woman) and lyrics by David Zippel (Hercules)—opens with a number called Buns ’N’ Roses. In it, we meet the town of Belleville, tyrannized by a vain queen who demands physical perfection of her subjects. Seconds after the overture, busty women in corsets sing lasciviously about their “fresh milk, creamy and frothy, straight from my dairy, squeezed by my hand.” Next, a shirtless baker bellows, “Hot buns, check out my hot buns.” Groan.