Fresh from ‘Bad Cinderella’ comes a recent Broadway musical “Long very long time ago” – some Even worse Cinderella.
Two hours and half-hour with one 15-minute break. On the Marquis Theatre.
The terrible show, which opened Thursday night on the Marquis Theatre, takes Britney Spears’ pop songs and throws them willy-nilly into the feminist Cinders, where the essential character realizes there’s more to life than falling in love with a prince.
That is wonderful, Cindy, but would not or not it’s nice in the event you were a freethinker, an independent woman, and your musical’s story made sense?
It’s bibbidi-bobbidi-brainless. As an alternative of making compelling characters or a gripping plot, book creator Jon Hartmere has melded dance floor melodies of farts and half-baked teacher favorites into a shapeless mush.
Once Upon is never funny, but at all times bland and inconceivable to follow.
Cinderella (played by a one-ton deer within the highlight by Briga Heelan) begins to appreciate that “happily ever after” is a lot of fun as she hangs out along with her buddies Snow White (Aisha Jackson), Sleeping Beauty (Ashley Chiu), Rapunzel (Gabrielle Beckford), Princess Pea (Morgan Whitley) and The Little Mermaid (Lauren Zakrin).
![The princesses begin](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013064707.jpg?w=1024)
The women sing “Baby One More Time” originally of the show in an try and seduce the princes. But Cinderella has other ideas for her future than settling down.
“Sometimes I believe, God, perhaps I’d prefer to, I do not know, keep each slippers for a change,” Betty White says simply in The Golden Girls. “Or stay out after midnight.”
The entire musical is more of the standard girl power message used by “Six” and “& Juliet”, just without their smarts and viewership.
By the way in which, the princess gag was done significantly better and smarter within the movies “Shrek” and “Ralph breaks into the Web.” The novelty of the fairy-tale encounter is gone, especially when the actresses placed on obscure Loren Elstein costumes which are so determined to not appear to be Disney, they do not appear to be anything.
![songs like](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013064643-1.jpg?w=1024)
The narrator (Adam Godley) wants the rebellious Cinderella to stick with the script. But her Fairy Godmother – nicknamed OFG for optimum annoyance – goes ahead and hands her a copy of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and tells the girl that she and Betty live together in Flatbush.
What?
And that odd moment is by some means considered enough to place the two-and-a-half-hour musical on hold.
Prince Charming is in fact here. The superb Justin Guarani sings “Oops!… I Did It Again” as Casanova hits a lot of princesses within the Scandoval style.
The superb Jennifer Simard plays the stepmother and, like Carolee Carmello because the stepmother in “Bad Cinderella,” is the perfect a part of the typical show. Every time Simard is on stage, the audience feels relieved as in the event that they’ve just found a cold bottle of Poland Spring within the Sahara Desert.
![Adam Godley plays the Narrator and Jennifer Simard plays the stepmother](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013064632.jpg?w=1024)
Sweet Ryan Steele plays the Erudite Prince, a shy suitor with a secret.
And because the narrator, Godley is…British.
For a lot of, clinging to history won’t matter so long as Spears’ hits are here: “Toxic,” “Crazy,” “Stronger” and more are stuffed into a crowded suitcase. And yes, they’re great songs.
The issue is that, unlike the work of ABBA or Celine Dion, Spears’s work is solely not theatrical music. Taken en masse, they turn into tiring and, dare I say, boring.
Co-directors/choreographers Keone Madrid and Mari Madrid staging the numbers energetically, but by the time they’re done, they’re completely forgotten.
They usually are not helped in any respect by Anna Fleischle’s kits, that are flimsy and rare and ineffective in distinguishing one place from one other.
How surreal to see giant talents like Godley (earth-shattering in “The Lehman Trilogy”), Simard (comics genius in “The Company”) and Steele (sensational dancer) wasting away on this wreckage. They’re wonderful and may spin gold from straw here, and the audience is joyful to see them.
But I can not wait to see all of them in something not so toxic.