Review: Not Your Parents' CINDERELLA at Hershey Theatre

The Rodgers and Hammerstein CINDERELLA that premiered on Broadway in 2013 was not your parents' - or possibly your - version, if you are an aficionado of the original 1957 and 1965 television productions, or of the various stage and television versions based on them before then. Some things will never change, like the unfortunate turning of the wicked stepsisters, Gabrielle and Charlotte as they're named here, into vaudevillian clown figures (which is especially unfortunate for the larger sister, though the current book at least doesn't poke fun at size). On the other hand, effects have changed, and so has costuming, which makes the new production, now in national tour and currently at Hershey Theatre, a thing of spectacular beauty.

Beauty is the reason to see this production. The costumes, designed by the legendary William Ivey Long, won him Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Tony nominations in 2013, and rightly so. Everything sparkles, dazzles, and nearly blinds the eye with color and style. Ball gowns flounce, frock coats trail, hats wave in the breeze, and even Ella's alleged rags aren't particularly shabby. The rightly-hailed transformation scene, in which a pumpkin becomes a carriage and Ella's rags turn to a magnificent gown, is a miracle of stagecraft. The carriage and horses are magical, as they should be. It's enough to make a fairy tale lover weep for happiness; never has there been this much glitz on the way to a happy ending.

Then there's the music. (Don't confuse the R&H CINDERELLA with Disney's. There are two different scores, and much as you quite properly may adore "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, sorry, wrong production.) You know "In My Own Little Corner" in your bones. You love it. We all do. "Impossible" is one of the most relentlessly cheery of tunes, and "Ten Minutes Ago" is not only a classic, but the sort of song people walk out of theatres humming. Never mind that this was written at the end of Rodgers' and Hammerstein's joint career and that they'd begun copying their own work at this point (and possibly didn't think a television production would wind up living so long in people's memories); the music and lyrics are splashy and fun, and frequently beautiful.

Beautiful costumes. Outstanding stagecraft. A delightful book-musical score. What else do you get? Some outstanding performances. Kaitlyn Davidson, playing Ella, is bright, beautiful, and talented, and a fine younger performer. Liz McCartney, who plays the elderly, decrepit Marie (really the fairy godmother) has a set of pipes that make impossible vocals more than possible, to audience delight. Aymee Garcia, singing stepsister Charlotte, has a surprisingly wonderful voice that's put to great work in the ballroom scene. Unfortunately, Prince Topher, Andy Huntington Jones, who was in the original Broadway cast, feels mismatched against Davidson, as if he's fresh out of theatre classes; he warms up very slowly in the show. Madame, the evil stepmother, played by Blair Ross, somehow feels as if Bette Midler and Katharine Hepburn had a mashup - it's not awful, but it's discomfiting.

Then there's the book. Douglas Carter Beane's rewrite of the book for the 2013 production takes a decided left turn from the original play - both storywise and politically. Who expected a story of a mistreated young woman and her handsome prince to be a war of the One Percent and the starving masses? The king and queen are dead, and an evil minister has been acting as regent until Prince Topher finishes university. Most of his time is spent engaging in greed, corruption, and taking land from starving peasants. But Ella's not-so-evil-really stepsister Gabrielle is secretly in love with a revolutionary who wants to run a soup kitchen, and Ella not only finds love with the prince but brings social justice and representative democratic voting rights to the kingdom. She and her friend Jean Michel only miss out on universal health care. (It feels a bit as if Beane were trying to combine Bernie Sanders' political ideas with the Book of Esther, only without the threat of death for speaking to King Ahashuerus.)

Unfortunately the revolutionary, Jean Michel, is made out to be a figure of fun at the same time, leaving the audience in doubt as to whether he's right by intelligence, stupidity, or happenstance. Government evil is similarly vaudevillian, as when the minister gets Prince Topher to sign every edict without reading them, as with Radar O'Reilly and the Colonel in M*A*S*H, until Ella awakens Topher to the minister's fiendish plot. It's an odd way to try to bring relevance to the story, and while the goal may be noble, it really, like the glass slipper on a stepsister's foot, doesn't fit at all.

Ignore the book, and a great time can be had by everyone. Pay attention, and you'll wonder how you walked into the establishment of a democratic monarchy in way pre-Revolutionary France, rather than into a story about a boy, a girl, and a glass shoe. SHREK: THE MUSICAL does insertion of politics in what looks like a children's story the right way. The revised CINDERELLA doesn't.

At Hershey Theatre through the 31st. Visit HersheyTheatre.com for tickets and information.

Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg

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