![]() ![]() (I’d love the see the Venn diagram detailing the intersection between Spears and Friedan fans.) Before Cinderella (Briga Heelan) has the chance to share Friedan’s ideas with her fellow fairy tale characters Snow White (Aisha Jackson), Rapunzel (Gabrielle Beckford), Sleeping Beauty (Ashley Chiu), the Little Mermaid (Lauren Zakrin), Princess Pea (Morgan Whitley), the book is seized by her wicked Stepmother (Jennifer Simard, uproarious). That the main plot element of Jon Hartmere’s book is Cinderella asserting her self-identity after being introduced to Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique by her “O.F.G.,” or Original Fairy Godmother (a very funny Brooke Dillman), gives you an idea of how weird it is. Not that they’d be able to sleep through this show if they tried, since the volume is pumped up to the sort of deafening levels you’d expect at, well, a Britney Spears concert. ![]() It’s beginning to seem as if Broadway is less a destination for the tired businessman than the tired tyke who didn’t get in their nap. The problem is that this latest revisionist exhumation of fairy tales arrives shortly after such superior examples of the burgeoning genre as the recent revival of Into the Woods and & Juliet (not a fairy tale, I know, but it feels like one) and such far worse examples as Bad Cinderella. Rather, they simply want their target audience to have a good time not, as the characters in Seinfeld used to sheepishly say, that there’s anything wrong with that. Based on the fact that it distributes free glowing bracelets to every audience member to wave in the air for the inevitable megamix during the curtain call, they’re not exactly straining for Sondheim-level depth. Of course, that’s assuming they have any. ![]() My job, such as it is, is to report on how well the show’s creators succeed in fulfilling their artistic aspirations. I’ll leave it to the theater historians and pundits to debate the ramifications of this turn of events in Broadway musical theater. There are, however, no less than three current musicals featuring the songs of Britney Spears, including Moulin Rouge, & Juliet, and now Once Upon a One More Time, the score of which consists entirely of numbers originally recorded by the pop star. Photo credit: Matthew Murphyįor the first time in more than four decades, there are no shows with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber currently playing on Broadway. The company of Once Upon a One More Time. ![]()
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