Matthew Murphy
Bad Cinderella could have been the poison apple that destroyed Revisionist fairy tales once and for all, but Britney Spears and Once Upon A One More Time, the new Broadway musical opening tonight full of hits and good humor, managed to have happy endings , which is as unexpected as it is enchanting. Smart, funny, great to watch and all with a beat to dance to: this homage to the Brothers Grimm, the sisters of the Second Wave and not least the indomitable Mrs. Spears is a delight.
Directing couple and choreographers Keone & Mari Madrid have collaborated with author Jon Hartmere to create a Technicolor piece smart enough to play dumb at times, boisterous enough to score a few points on the side, and it has brought to the stage so successfully It seems to be an assemblage of beauties, princesses, charmers and mermaids born entirely out of a magical land of Broadway imagination. Upon closer inspection, you’ll recognize a few of them, including American Idol’s Justin Guarini, and more than a few stage productions making big leaps to Broadway stardom here.
But first, let’s talk about Britney. She doesn’t appear or be referenced here (although production notes indicate the songs were “fully authorized and licensed by Britney after her conservatory years”), but her spirit and tenacity – not to mention a music catalogue, which for many in audiences will likely be a gift they didn’t know they wanted – it’s sprinkled across this production, as are so many of the dazzling “air sculpts,” glitter bombs and fireflies created by talented Brooklyn artist Daniel Wurtzel were designed. “Once Upon a One More Time” is peppered with beautiful moments that come and go quickly like one of the floating wine glasses or a changing forest bird.
Aisha Jackson Matthew Murphy
To be honest, the premise is nothing Broadway audiences haven’t seen: a cast of fairytale heroes – Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, the Princess with the Pea, the Little Mermaid, the Evil Stepmother, and her two Egoists Daughters, a fairy godmother, and of course plenty of too-perfect princes — enough to populate all five productions of Into The Woods, and the sisters do it for themselves ethos comes through Six, that came through Wicked.
But the wish that comes true with “Once Upon a One More Time” is that it goes away without an apology or even a slight blush. Hartmere and the Madrids took the best of those shows and gave them their own personality. Yes, we’ve seen these characters – not the original characters, the revisionist characters – before, the smarter, modernized interpretations of their Grimm counterparts, more feminist, more lustful, more open to LGBTQ+ sympathy than anything from Golden Age Disney. What “Six” does for Tudor England “Once Upon a One More Time” for long-shattered fairy tales.
But as a clever but very evil wizard might have said — no, he’s not here — there’s one thing these shows don’t have: Betty Friedan. Hartmere’s greatest source of inspiration is the magical introduction of The Feminine Mystique, the bible of ’60s feminism, into the mix. The good girls from Wonderland – 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 either of them has actually seen a book, let alone read one has she). They are kept willfully uneducated and uninformed by the omniscient, tyrannical and horribly sexist narrator played by The Lehman Brothers’ Adam Godley.
Kept indifferent and self-satisfied – the same goes for the vain, dimwitted prince – they are content enough to rehash their own well-memorized, often-re-enacted stories, always on the lookout for even the slightest deviation or the smallest blunder, the they’re convinced it would prove disastrous for both – they could be banished to the horrible land of Story’s End – and for the adorable little girl who sets things in motion every day by starting her favorite stories to read.
It’s Cinderella (the great Briga Heelan in her Broadway debut) who is only just beginning to suspect that these age-old tales might be wholesome not just for today’s little girls, or for themselves. She begins to feel a vague dissatisfaction, the kind of emptiness that so many American women of the 1950s might recognize. And just as she begins to question herself – does she really want to limp barefoot night after night when the clock strikes 12, stalked by an inconspicuous stranger whose greatest love is himself? – She receives a visit from the long-banished legendary OFG – Original Fairy Godmother – who, excited to grant a wish that doesn’t involve fabric, gifts Cin with, yes, a book. And not just any book, but the feminist Friedan classic.
Justin Guarini Matthew Murphy
Cin’s intellectual curiosity and dissatisfaction soon spread to the other women of fairyland, a transformation sealed when the heroines, through a brazen act of rule-breaking, discover that her Prince Charming, her loyal prince, and her prince, whoever, are actually one and the same (“Oops! … I Did It Again,” Guarini sings as the stencil is flipped up).
It would be unfair to spoil the plot beyond that, even though you’ll likely see most of the twists coming, or at least predict the entire arc. Of course, there will be happily ever after, and it will suit 21st-century sensibilities. But we’re revealing more, including who is singing which Spears song – including “Toxic”, “Baby One More Time”, “Lucky”, “I Wanna Go”, “Crazy”, “If I’m Dancing”, “Passenger” and “Work Bitch” – would spoil the many little tidbits of the musical. OK, stepmom gets “Toxic” and “Work Bitch,” but you probably figured that out.
The adventure is played out on Anna Fleischle’s minimalist set design, beautifully complemented by Kenneth Posner’s pulsing lights, Sven Ortel’s fairytale video projections, Loren Elstein’s witty costume and hair designs that evoke classic fairytale style (and Disney iconography, like Snow’s blue and yellow dress) fusing white) with post Spice Girl flash and the Andrew Keister designed sound any dance club would covet. The Madrids’ clean choreography updates the stylized movements of classic Spears videos and boy band performances with athletic vitality and unexpected grace.
As appealing as these creative elements are, without a cast as good as this, the project would fail. To cite just a few examples, Heelan’s Cinderella is the grounded focal point, with Aisha Jackson as Snow White’s best friend, Guarini at princely perfection, Godley making the best of a rather ill-defined narrator, and Jennifer Simard following a scene other than the deliciously evil stepmother steals.
Simard, who recently committed the same welcome larceny in the company, is a wonderful singer with impeccable comedic timing who is challenged in laughter by comedian Brooke Dillman in a convincingly broad comic performance as the Original Fairy Godmother, a twist that one Paying homage to her The Spirit of the Classics supports (but invaluably) funny ladies like Mary Wickes and Jane Withers, as does the seminal feminist icon so freely quoted here. It’s the OFG that manages to deliver one of the show’s sweetest little surprises towards the end, a grace note in a production that has already won our hearts.
Title: It was once again
Venue: Marquis Theater on Broadway
Director & Choreographers: Keone & Mari Madrid
A book: Jon Hartmere
Music: Britney Spears Hits
Main actor: Briga Heelan, Justin Guarini, Aisha Jackson, Jennifer Simard, Adam Godley, Brooke Dillman, Amy Hillner Larsen, Tess Soltau, Gabrielle Beckford, Ashley Chiu, Nathan Levy, Ryan Steele, Morgan Whitley, Lauren Zakrin, Mila Weir
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes (incl. break)