![]() ![]() “Acne is a misdemeanor/ cellulite is banned.” “Wrinkles are not tolerated, torsos must be tanned,” they decree, smizing to the back row. Clad in a psychedelic fever dream of sexed-up Ancien Regime silhouettes (by costume and set designer Gabriela Tylesova), they are shallow, dumb and single-mindedly obsessed with being hot. ![]() You could hardly expect the townspeople of Belleville, who introduce themselves in a gyrating opening number called “Buns ‘n’ Roses/ Beauty Is Our Duty,” not to be juiced up and ready to cavort. 'Promising Young Woman' Oscar-Winner Emerald Fennell Helped Write 'John Wick' Spinoff Starring Ana de ArmasĪndrew Lloyd Webber Booed After Calling His 'Cinderella' Musical a 'Costly Mistake' During Final Curtain Callīut it is also very horny, which is its primary claim to fun. ![]() Grant, Archie Madekwe and Alison Oliver Join Emerald Fennell's 'Saltburn' “Bad Cinderella,” directed here by Laurence Connor (“ School of Rock”), even manages to gleefully reinforce the chronic social fixations - on beauty, vanity and wealth - that it purports to deem toxic. The book, originally written by Emerald Fennell, the Oscar winning screenwriter of “ Promising Young Woman,” and adapted for Broadway by the playwright Alexis Scheer, is an illogical head-scratcher, despite being based on a story most everyone knows. Composed by Webber and with lyrics by David Zippel, it is a muddled and momentum-less retooling of the familiar fairy tale in search of a coherent point of view as if it were a glass-slippered foot. To clear up the obvious question, “Bad Cinderella,” which opened at the Imperial Theater Thursday night, isn’t good. Was it preemptive self-defense against Broadway reviews like this one, that would apply aesthetic judgment to the musical’s gauche bonanza of too-muchness? Would its version of Cinderella be - you know, a bad girl, but in a sexually liberated (and feminist!) way? Or was it a rare bit of truth in advertising? The addition of “bad” to the title of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest maximalist spectacle, formerly known simply as “Cinderella” when it premiered for a short-lived run on the West End in 2021, would seem like a cleverly self-conscious move. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |