![]() ![]() OK, Stepmother gets “Toxic” and “Work Bitch,” but you probably figured that already. But even revealing anything more, including who sings which Spears song – among them, “Toxic,” “Baby One More Time,” “Lucky,” “I Wanna Go,” “Crazy,” “If I’m Dancing,” “Passenger,” and “Work Bitch” – would be to spoil the musical’s many little treats. There will be happy ever after, of course, and it will be in keeping with 21st Century sensibilities. To spoil the plot beyond this would be unfair, even though you’ll likely see most of the twists and turns coming, or at least predict the overall story arc. ![]() ![]() And not just any book, but the Friedan feminist classic.īefore long, Cin’s intellectual inquisitiveness and dissatisfaction spread to the other women of fairy land, a transformation sealed when, through a brazen act of rule-breaking, the heroines discover that their Prince Charming and Prince Faithful and Prince whoever are actually one and the same (“Oops! … I Did It Again,” sings Guarini when the jig is up). And just when she begins to ask questions of herself – does she really want to go limping shoeless night after night when the clock strikes 12, chased by a callow stranger whose greatest love is himself? – she’s visited by the long-banished, legendary OFG – Original Fairy Godmother – who, thrilled to be granting a wish that doesn’t involve fabric, provides Cin with, yes, a book. She begins to feel a vague dissatisfaction, the sort of emptiness so many American women of the 1950s might recognize. It’s Cinderella (the terrific Briga Heelan, in her Broadway debut) who only slowly begins to suspect that these age-old stories might not only be quite healthy for today’s little girls, or for herself. Kept incurious and complacent – that goes true for the vain, dim-witted prince too – they’re content enough to rehash their own well-memorized, often-reenacted tales, ever on nervous guard for even the slightest variation or blooper that, they’re convinced, would prove disastrous for both themselves – they could get banished to the terrifying land of the “Story’s End” – and for the adorable little girl sets things in motion each day when she begins reading her favorite tales. The good girls of fairy land – Snow and Cin and Rap and Pea and the rest – meet weekly for their “Scroll Club,” a precursor to Oprah’s Book Club long before any of them have actually seen a book, must less read one (they’re purposely kept uneducated and uninformed by the omniscient, tyrannical and terribly sexist Narrator, played by The Lehman Brother‘s Adam Godley). Hartmere’s greatest stroke of inspiration is to magically introduce The Feminine Mystique, that Bible of ’60s feminism, into the mix. What Six does for Tudor England Once Upon a One More Time does for long-fractured fairy tales.īut as a wise yet very bad wizard might have said – no, he’s not here – there’s one thing those shows haven’t got: Betty Friedan. Yes, we’ve seen these characters – not the original characters, the revisionist characters – before, the wiser modernized interpretations of their Grimm counterparts, more feminist, more lusty, more open to LGBTQ+ sympathies than anything from Golden Age Disney. Hartmere and the Madrids have taken the best of those shows and sprinkled their own personality all over ’em. Upon closer inspection you’ll recognize some of them, including Justin Guarini of American Idol fame and more than a few stage productions here making a big leap into Broadway stardom.īut the wish-come-true of Once Upon a One More Time is that it lifts without apology or even a slight blush. Husband and wife director & choreographers Keone & Mari Madrid have collaborated with book writer Jon Hartmere to come up with a technicolor confection that’s clever enough to play dumb once in a while, giddy enough to make a few points along the way and so winningly performed it seems a collection of beauties, princesses, charmings and mermaids arrived fully formed from some magic land of Broadway make-believe. ![]() Smart, funny, splendid to look at and all with a beat you can dance to, this tribute to the Brothers Grimm, the sisters of the Second Wave and, not least, the indomitable Ms. Bad Cinderella could have been the poison apple that killed off revisionist fairy tales once and for all, but Britney Spears and Once Upon A One More Time, the new Broadway musical opening tonight that brims with her hits and high spirits, has come along to deliver a happy ever after that’s as unexpected as it is enchanting. ![]()
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