Bad Cinderella

Not since "Starlight Express" has Andrew Lloyd Webber written such a lackluster musical. The songs you hear throughout the musical "Bad Cinderella" at The Imperial Theatre go in one ear and out the other and are long forgotten even before the final curtain drops. Emerald Fennell's book is nothing to really get excited about either. The premise here is that we visit a town called Belleville where only the beautiful people live; Cinderella is considered bad because she is seen as ugly, and because she spray painted on Prince Charming s statue "beauty sucks". Wow. Deep!

The whole show is a confusing piece of garble, flavored over with outrageously garish costumes (Gabriela Tylesova), Tylesova does a great job, however, with the scenic design.Director Laurence Connor reaches for the campy, the cheap laughs and clearly panders to the diverse audience members. Based on gay themes as well as a clear message that we only look toward the outside rather than the inherent good in people, "Bad Cinderella" has too weak of a plot to be taken as good theater and any message it tries to serve is lost in the confusion.

Cinderella (Linedy Genao) is for the most part good; she has a nice singing voice, delivers the "business" nicely and can dance. In the lead role, however, she is not a big enough talent to deliver like many of today's stars on Broadway can.The same holds true for Prince Sebastian (Jordon Dobson). Dobson cannot deliver the way a star should, he is to one dimensional and at times, flat.While Carolee Carmello as the Stepmother and Grace McLean as the Queen are very good, the rest of the cast for the most part goes through the motions where the acting is concerned.

Bruno Poet's lighting is nicely done to complement the story, particularly the musical part of the show. JoAnn M. Hunter's choreography ranges between decent and ridiculous. At one point in the show, the audience has to watch a Chippendale version of dancers doing push ups and lifting weights shirtless and in leather pants.

"Bad Cinderella" holds to the basic story of the sisters, the mean stepmother; the ball dropping at midnight. Only here the sisters are beyond annoying, Adele (Sami Gayle) has such a nasal voice that she is hard to hear, her sister Marie (Morgan Higgins) has a hairstyle similar to Lady Gaga and uses all the cutesy phrases that don't add up to anything meaningful, nor funny. If all of this is not distracting enough, the constant turnstile staging left most of the audience with vertigo by the shows end.

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The summary and observation of "Bad Cinderella" is the following... As Broadway ushers in diversity (Three of the main characters are of color), not enough is being placed on talent. Many of the actors today on Broadway should not be their.

Bad Cinderella tries to capture the woke audience, and in that case it succeds. This show had Prince Charming as a gay man, marrying another man. While it goes over with some of the audience, it fails with other members of the audience.

Broadway is trying to usher in diversity for diversities sake. Many of the plays and musicals broght forth are not good. The costumes are horrid, the sets for the most part are non existent. This is not a good way to prop up the box office receipts. In the new wave of Broadway, they are leaving behind the older monied white people who are responsible for most of the box.

While thye 2023 season is so far way better than 2022, Broadway has a long way to go in that it needs to get the best talent on Broadway, not actors who check off certain boxes. The writing too has to be made tighter as well as the direction. In Bad Cinderella I do not understand why the direction went the way it did. It was not tight nor coherent and as such made for a painful evening.