For those who are thirsty (but mostly the gays), there’s the chorus of barechested, leather-harnessed hunks, who mug and flex in a homoerotic number pining for their lost Adonis (the sensually modern choreography is by JoAnn M. “Bad Cinderella” also presumes to know what a sizable fraction of its audience wants, and panders to them shamelessly with varying degrees of success. She and Prince Sebastian are childhood besties and already in love, so what stands in their way for two and a half hours? The answer has something to do with Cinderella’s Stepmother (Carolee Carmello, the production’s indispensable crown jewel) threatening to out the Queen as a fellow ex-courtesan and social climber, a “Real Housewives of Versailles” rivalry that delivers the wickedly satisfying diva duet “I Know You.” (“Nobody likes jokes!” Cinderella’s Stepmother spits at her if only the script gave the cunning and delightful Carmello more of them.) Let’s grant, for argument’s sake, that Cinderella’s “alarming” spiky updo and drab leather jacket constitute grounds for social exile (the wig and hair design by Luc Verschueren is excellent). Cinderella’s moment of weakness - when she admits that she wants to be hot just like everyone else, and visits the town Godmother and cosmetologist (Christina Acosta Robinson) for a ball-worthy makeover - amounts to a wig change. Which is worth noting only because the entire reconceived plot of “Bad Cinderella” insists that its heroine is an ugly duckling. But she is also, as portrayed here by Genao, obviously and objectively beautiful. Of course, “bad” is a misnomer for Cinderella, whose “sky high IQ” and “style all her own” are meant to signal her virtue. Indifference to appearances would seem to set our heroes apart the vapid mob calls Cinderella (Linedy Genao) “Bad Cinderella” because she supposedly doesn’t care about looks - she even vandalized a memorial to Prince Charming (who’s gone AWOL while dragon slaying) with the treasonous slogan “beauty sucks.” The younger prince Sebastian (Jordan Dobson) is also considered a puny eyesore in comparison to his strapping older brother, the memory of whom transforms even their mother, the Queen (Grace McLean), into a drool-face emoji.
“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. “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.īut it is also very horny, which is its primary claim to fun.
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.
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