Evan Zimmerman
All through Andrew Lloyd Webber’s inane mish-mash of a Broadway musical Bad Cinderella (Imperial Theatre, booking to Sept 23) the nagging question is: what makes this Cinderella “bad” in any interesting, intriguing, meaningfully different way? The answer: not much. The title of the musical is a nonsense and marketing stunt—in London’s West End the same show was called Cinderella, and with more honest reason.
This Cinderella (Linedy Genao in her Broadway debut; she writes in the production Playbill that she is the first Latina performer to originate a leading role in a Lloyd Webber musical) and her true love Prince Sebastian (Jordan Dobson) are modern-ish facsimiles of fairly traditional characters. The story isn’t that much changed, despite the insistence that Bad Cinderella is a punk and rebel.
She really isn’t. As a character she swaggers and stomps around and looks angry, but she’s a victim-y drip at heart, albeit one dressed in a cool jacket and tight trousers. So is Sebastian. These whining characters deserve each other, but not for the reasons the show intends.