No Fairy Tale

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bad Cinderella forgets the moral of the original.

- Chris Rovzar

The creators behind the new musical Bad Cinderella were at least clever about one thing: They claimed the word “bad” as their own before it could be used against them. Handily, there are many other useful terms to describe the production: “prurient,” “ill-conceived,” “nonsensical,” “overlong” and “icky.”

Let’s start with the icky, since the show certainly does. Transferred from London’s West End to Broadway, Bad Cinderella—directed by Laurence Connor, with a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber, a book by Emerald Fennell (A Promising Young Woman) and lyrics by David Zippel (Hercules)—opens with a number called … Buns ’N’ Roses. In it, we meet the town of Belleville, tyrannized by a vain queen who demands physical perfection of her subjects. Seconds after the overture, busty women in corsets sing lasciviously about their “fresh milk, creamy and frothy, straight from my dairy, squeezed by my hand.” Next, a shirtless baker bellows, “Hot buns, check out my hot buns.” Groan.

All that beauty attracts tourism, the ensemble tells us: “Every single citizen’s a cut and chiseled god. / Everyone among us has a ripped and rockin’ bod.” And the rhymes go thudding downhill from there.