It’s Cinderella Jim, but not as we know it. The setting is the smug, small-c conservative town of Belleville in which the excellent Carrie Hope Fletcher plays the title role as a defiant, one-person counter culture with a grunge wardrobe and goth black lipstick. Her Prince isn’t Charming, but Sebastian played by a likeable and lithe Ivano Turco who is no less independent minded.
He and Cinderella are old friends and the question is not whether they can be together but can they admit to each other that they want to be.
There was more drama in the run up to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new show than most productions manage to generate on stage. Pandemic-induced delays were bad enough causing the composer impresario to threaten to break government restrictions so unconvinced was he about the unfairness with which his show and theatre generally was being treated.
And then just as all the stars seemed aligned for a performance in front of a full capacity audience they were hit by Pingdemic and had to postpone. But if Webber seemed even more frustrated than you might expect by the delays, now you can see why. It may be that he already knew he had a hit on his hands.
The co-creator of Joseph and Jesus Christ Superstar has never shirked from re-conveying some of the best known stories ever told. But with the help of writer Emerald Fennell (best known for Killing Eve) this one has been re-invented to accommodate a slew of post-Me Too sentiments and 21st century coinventions. This is a good thing.
The bimbette stepsisters (Georgina Castle and Laura Baldwin) are ugly all right — but on the inside. Meanwhile their mother (a terrific comedy turn played by Victoria Hamilton-Barritt) is so brimful of loathing for humanity there is enough left over to direct at herself, which actually makes her likeable. In I Know You, her duet with Rebecca Trehern’s hedonistic Queen, David Zippel’s lyrics reveal a common backstory in which the two are revealed as social climbers who, in the Queen’s case at least, slept their way to the top.
Suitably enough her royal court is populated by muscle bound, groin thrusting alpha-knights. There are moments when I wondered if I had taken my eight-year-old daughter to a Magic Mike show. But as her mother pointed out, the women dancing suggestively around Jason Donovan’s Pharaoh in Lloyd Webber’s other recent opening Joseph transmit more problematic messaging for little girls than the ridiculous men here.
We’re on safer ground when it comes to the scene in which Cinderella qualifies for the ball. The Godmother (Gloria Onitiri) is a plastic surgeon who revamps her clients by putting them under the knife. Thankfully there isn’t time in the case of our Cinders so she bungs on a blonde wig instead and is ready for Act 2’s meat market in which Sebastian is made to choose a wife. He cannot see that one of the offerings is his beloved Cinderella who he rejects as another “bimbo”.
For one truly transgressive moment it seems as if Cinders might make her way in the world without getting hitched to her prince. But no. Fennell’s plot doesn’t quite have the chutzpah to end with a heroine who can make it in the world on her own. But there are two genuine theatrical coups in store — one involving the way in which stage is used, the other a plot twist. And with score that is Lloyd Webber’s best for years, this much-delayed show turns out to be well worth the wait.