Reviews 2015
Reviews 2015
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music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by Douglas Carter Beane, directed by Michael Brokaw
David Mirvish, Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto
December 2, 2015-January 10, 2016
Prince: “Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?”
The touring production of Cinderella now playing in Toronto is the most opulent I’ve ever seen. It has impressive sets and costumes, balletic choreography and an outstanding cast featuring strong performances from Kaitlyn Davidson in the title role and Andy Huntington Jones as her Prince. All that’s missing is the magic of the original fairy tale that Oscar Hammerstein II captured so well in his original book for the television musical in 1957. The magic has gone missing because this touring production is based on the first-ever Broadway production of Cinderella in 2013. For that production a new book was commissioned by Douglas Carter Beane that destroys the structure of the original tale, adds an unnecessary subplot and narrows the focus of the story in a misguided effort to make it politically correct. At least almost all of the delightful original music is still there, even if Beane’s new book dilutes its effect.
Since it was written for television, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella has a different quality from the duo’s other musicals. As befitting the small screen, the musical was intimate rather than grand. It focussed on smaller moments in the lives of the characters rather than grand emotions. Cinderella’s song to comfort herself “In My Own Little Corner” is a perfect example of this as is Cinderella and the Prince’s duet “Ten Minutes Since”.
Starting in 1961 stage versions of the musical appeared. The main obstacle to overcome was scenes that had to be rethought since the instant scene changes possible on television were not as easy to effect on stage. A tour of one of these versions played Toronto in 2001 and others have been seen in regional theatres like Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius in 1998 and at the Grand Theatre, London, in 2011. All of these stayed true to the Hammerstein’s original book with the Grand Theatre’s the best at capturing the show’s intimacy and wistful mood.
For the 2013 Broadway production, Douglas Carter Beane managed to contrive a book that undoes all the virtues of the original. The original television musical ran for only 90 minutes. Beane’s version runs for two hours and 25 minutes. For a show likely to be seen by parents with children, longer is not better. The most bizarre aspect of Beane’s artificial lengthening of the story is that he has Cinderella visit the Prince’s castle twice in a ballgown and face the midnight deadline twice. This is certainly not what happens in Hammerstein’s book nor in any version children will know. It destroys the structure and tension of the story that makes the first night at the ball the make-or-break night for Cinderella.
To achieve this effect, Beane decides that Cinderella does not lose her glass slipper as she runs away from the ball at midnight. The Prince, no shoe to hand, searches for her unsuccessfully and decides to hold a banquet and invite all the girls who had attended the ball. The idea is nonsensical since everyone at the ball already knows that the Prince fell in love with the mysterious girl in white, so why should they put themselves through the humiliation of being rejected by the Prince a second time? Beane decides that Cinderella in fleeing the banquet at midnight should leave her shoe behind on purpose so that she will know if the Prince will love her when he sees what she really looks like. Having Cinderella try on the glass slipper in her humble home, as in the original, is a much more powerful image and proves the same thing much more elegantly.
Beane thinks that having Cinderella leave her shoe behind on purpose somehow empowers her. Unfortunately, it can be viewed another way since it reveals Cinderella as a schemer, which her wicked sisters are, but she is not supposed to be. Presenting Cinderella’s transformation, arrival at the palace, midnight deadline and flight twice is an extraordinarily foolish idea and deadens the impact of such an iconic fairy tale sequence.
A second foolish idea of Beane’s, also used in the counterproductive effort to lengthen the show’s running time, is the addition of a subplot. This plot finds that one of Cinderella’s two wicked stepsisters, Gabrielle, actually is not wicked and instead feels sympathy for how Cinderella is treated by her mother, Madame, and her sister Charlotte. One reason for this is that Gabrielle is in love with a lower-class social activist (yes, that’s right), Jean-Michel, who goes about decrying how the Prince’s evil counsellor Sebastian, another new character, has caused poor people to be turned out of their houses. Madame has forbidden Jean-Michel and Gabrielle to see each other so Cinderella is not the only victim in the house. This fact lessens the isolation Cinderella should feel and deprives us of the usual fun that happens in the traditional story with two bickering stepsisters competing with each other.
Beane quite unbelievably makes Jean-Michel’s activism the cause for the Prince’s wedding. Since Beane has killed off the Prince’s parents (alive and quite comic in Hammerstein), he has no good reason for the Prince to marry since all his evil advisor wants is control. Therefore, he has Prince’s advisor decide that a royal wedding will be just the thing to distract the populace from the issues Jean-Michel keeps bringing up. There is no good reason for the Prince to agree, except that he went to an all-boys school.
The folly of this plot device is evident when Beane shows the peasants torn between listening to Jean-Michel’s tirades and the Herald’s announcement of the ball. If Beane is trying to be a populist he blows it here because he shows that the peasants are more interested in the ball than in social justice. So bread and circuses win again. The fact, however, that only women dressed in finery will be admitted ought to stir up class anger in the kingdom, not squelch it. But then Beane has Cinderella take up Jean-Michel’s cause. So the girl who dreams of dressing up, going to a ball and marrying a prince, is also a social activist? At the end she helps bring democracy to the kingdom by suggesting the populace elect a prime minister. If she were really keen on social equality, why not go further and have the Prince dissolve the monarchy – except that then she wouldn’t be a princess. These are just some of innumerable contradictions in Beane’s book.
It’s infuriating to look forward to seeing a familiar musical on stage only to find that someone has ruined it. This happens quite often in the opera world when directors try to force an idiosyncratic concept on an opera. What is worse here is that the nonsensical concept has been written into the musical. I certainly hope that future theatre companies will be able to choose to stage the original version rather be forced to choose this new one.
Fortunately for the show, the singers are all first-rate. Kaitlyn Davidson has a fine, clear voice and fits Beane’s new image of Cinderella as strong and self-reliant to the point that we don’t really perceive her as meek and oppressed. She doesn’t bring out the melancholy in “In My Own Little Corner” and is more in her element in Cinderella’s more outgoing songs like “It’s Possible”.
Andy Harrison Jones makes a tall, good-looking Prince Christopher (here called Prince Topher) and has enough of a goofy air about him that we can see how his evil counsellor could so easily hoodwink him. He has a strong expressive voice that gives “Me, Who Am I?” (a song cut from R&H’s Me and Juliet) and “Loneliness of Evening” (a song cut from South Pacific) real heft.
Liz McCartney play both sides of her role well – as Marie, a supposedly despondent madwoman who is really Cinderella’s optimistic Fairy Godmother. She brings out the fun of “Possible” and the grandeur of “There’s Music in You” (a song from R&H’s Main Street to Broadway) used here to act as the typical R&H inspirational mezzo aria.
Chauncey Packer displays a powerful voice as Lord Pinkleton, the Prince’s herald, and has enough magnetism that you wish Beane had expanded his role instead of some of the others.
Among the roles that involve more acting than singing is Blair Ross, as Madame, who is made up to look like a Disney villainess, say Cruella de Vil, come alive on stage. She is suitably haughty, egocentric and brittle. Kimberly Fauré’s bespectacled Gabrielle, unlike the usual stepsister, is shy and sympathetic, while Aymee Garcia’s plump Charlotte is brash and demanding. Beane has concentrated nearly all the comedy in the show in Charlotte. It consists mostly in her using contemporary language and gestures that clash with those of everyone else, but it’s a burden Garcia carries with glee.
As Sebastian, the Prince’s evil counsellor, Blake Hammond seems to be channelling the late Dom DeLuise and comes off more as self-obsessed than menacing. As Jean-Michel, David Andino, whose look seems inspired by Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, appears more like an ineffectual student leader than an real firebrand.
In dancing roles, both Blakely Slaybaugh as the Raccoon and Tanner Ray Wilson as the Fox make a great impression as two forest animals surprised to find they have become footmen, but happy to give the Prince’s soldiers the chase.
While Beane’s book flits off into contemporary concerns, Anna Louizos’s storybook-like sets and William Ivey Long’s elaborate costumes help keep the show grounded in the world of fairy tales. Long’s costumes for Cinderella and Marie are especially ingenious since they change from rags to finery right before our eyes.
The original Cinderella was charming, small scale and glowing with warmth. The new Cinderella is grandiose, overblown and coldly spectacular. It’s hard to see how anyone could get so well-known a story as this wrong, but Beane’s new book is so full of contradictions that it makes nonsense of the story and the characters. Yet, there is still the glorious music of Rodgers and even more of it than in the original musical. If you can enjoy that and Josh Rhodes swirling choreography and ignore the story, you will likely have a good time. The question is, “Is it possible to see a show called Cinderella and ignore the story?”
©Christopher Hoile
Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes, including intermission.
Tour stops completed after Toronto:
• The Bushnell, Hartford, CT
January 12-16, 2016;
• Proctors, Schenectady, NY
January 19-24, 2016;
• Hershey Theatre, Hershey, PA
January 26-31, 2016;
• Chrysler Hall, Norfolk, VA
February 2-7, 2016;
• Schuster Center, Dayton, OH
February 9-14, 2016;
• Fisher Theatre, Detroit, MI
February 16-28, 2016;
• Walton Arts Center, Fayetteville, AR
March 1-6, 2016;
• Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, Appleton, WI
March 8-13, 2016;
• Orpheum Theater, Omaha, NE
March 15-20, 2016;
• Civic Center Music Hall, Oklahoma City, OK
March 22-27, 2016;
• The Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, OK
March 29-April 3, 2016;
• The Majestic Theatre, San Antonio, TX
April 5-10, 2016;
• Segerstrom Center, Costa Mesa, CA
April 19-May 1, 2016;
• SHN Orpheum Theatre, San Francisco, CA
May 3-8, 2016
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Andy Harrison Jones as Prince Topher and Kaitlyn Davidson as Cinderella; Liz McCartney as Marie and Kaitlyn Davidson; Kaitlyn Davidson, Blair Ross as Madame, Kimberly Fauré as Gabrielle and Aymee Garcia as Charlotte. ©2015 Carol Rosegg.
For tickets, visit www.mirvish.com.
2015-12-03
Cinderella