ALW's Cinderella - Gillian Lynne / U.K. Tour (rumour)

Half term, I assume 

Am I miscounting? I see 9 shows in a given week which is only really 1 extra?

Are you counting the left column on your paws, BurlyBeaR, rather than the right? There's No Performance on Tuesday...unless she's the third cover. 🙂

The website says “additional half term matinee,” despite it really being unsuitable for 6 year olds like their age guidance suggests.

Article from last year, where Carrie Hope Fletcher explains that social media is "her job".

"Carrie Hope Fletcher: 'You Might Roll Your Eyes When I Say Social Media Is My Job, But It's Given Me Huge Opportunities'"

graziadaily.co.uk/life/real-life/carrie-hope-fletcher-you-tube/

Then why is she so bad at it?

Carrie recently said in her interview at Magic at The Musicals that there is ‘nothing she finds funnier than people coming to see our version of Cinderella, thinking it will be the story they know but it isn’t’ (not exact wording but the sentiment is the same)

I don’t know about her, but when I was at the show, sitting behind a little girl in a blue Cinderella ballgown who gasped when she saw Cinderella and kept asking her mum questions about what the hell was going on, I actually felt bad for her and didn’t think it was funny at all.

After initially having booked tickets to the 2020 previews (which obviously were postponed), I finally went to see this last night, so I'm very late to the ball.

I'm not sure I know what to make of this. I'm certainly not the target audience but I'm not sure who is. Maybe female teenagers? Presumably that explains the number of 'jokes' that I found just...not funny, e.g. the lyric: 'you knob'.

My partner hated it and thought it was the worst ever seen in the West End for some time. I feel more generous than that. There are some lovely melodies but they are all undermined by the shockingly tacky sound and orchestrations. I was amazed to read in my programme that the minuscule band has strings in it, because every string sound (and virtually every other sound as well) sounded like a MIDI file. The orchestral swelling in 'Far Too Late', which is a beautiful melody, sounded so artificial that it just undermined any pathos that there might have been. Did they just run all the live sound through some kind of horrendous filter?

Tonally it was all over the place. Is it pastiche panto, a Wicked/Disney-wannabe, a serious drama about female empowerment…or what? I felt it just didn’t know what it wanted to be and was being pulled in too many directions. I didn’t find Emerald Fennell’s book particularly brilliant; in fact, it was predictable (I deliberately avoided reading stuff about the plot beforehand but midway through the first act predicted the return of Prince Charming and even the gay subplot) and rather boring. There were also too many plotholes, even for a fairytale, and far too many loose ends that just…got forgotten about. Many bits felt like an afterthought shoe-horned in, such as the Godmother.

As for the lyrics, Zippel is not a good match for Lloyd Webber. They are better than the terrible lyrics for The Woman in White, but for a show that seems to want to be clever and contrary, they don’t have the bite required. I am absolutely baffled that the Evening Standard thought they were ‘sublime’ and that the Guardian thought they were ‘crystalline’. Just…what?

That said, I think the main problem here is not the material but the director, who has failed in making this into a cohesive whole. What Laurence Connor brought to the table here I have no idea and I am bamboozled as to why he gets gigs. Has he ever directed anything decent? The staging was incredibly bad. Most scenes just involve characters walking round and round the revolve for lack of anything else to do, to the point where I almost felt dizzy. By all means use a revolve but do so intelligently, cf. the original Miz and Hamilton. When they’re not doing that the blocking is incredibly awkward. The ‘Bad Cinderella’ song does not make it remotely obvious that they’re trying to constrain her and tie her to a tree. The way each character walked down the aisle in the wedding sequence looked literally lame—I don’t know if they’re trying to convey slow motion, but it just looked like they were limping following a car crash on the way to the church.

A good director might have told ALW that there are a few too many reprises in Cinderella’s eleven-o’-clock number, or that the recit between Cindrella and Sebastian is often too long and boring and needs cutting or reworking entirely (how long did we need to hear them saying bye to each other in the first interaction between them?). A good director might have vetoed the casting of someone who, though likeable, is too inexperienced and clearly not ready for the role of a leading man in a major West End musical. A good director might have fought for a better budget for the set design which, let’s face it, looks incredibly amateur and like someone’s half-finished school project. A good director might also have required better delivery of the lines of most of the actors—at one point I wondered whether the terrible line delivery was because this was intentionally some sort of bad-panto-gone-wrong, but concluded that it was just…crap. And a good director would have tried to up the pace rather than making large sections of the show slow and boring. There weren’t really any ‘WOW’ moments that you’d expect in a major West End musical to make up for this. A show is in trouble when the main staging effect people talk about is down to the architect of the theatre, who had nothing to do with the show, rather than the director.

I did, however, like Carrie Hope Fletcher (something I wasn’t expecting, as I was left cold by the promotional appearances) and her comic timing and vocals were both great. Rebecca Trehearn also stole the show in every scene in which she appeared. The rest of the cast were forgettable.

You can take all of the above with a pinch of salt, though. The (mostly maskless, despite the signs everywhere imploring them to wear masks) audience members were screaming and cheering throughout most of the show, with a fair number (but not the whole house) giving a standing O at the end. I did wonder how much of this is because they genuinely thought it was amazing, or because they’re just happy to see a live show again.

This is exactly everything I thought about it. I'm happy some people love it, but everything you said sums up all the issues I had. Such a shame, as I love (or at least generally like) almost everything else with ALW's name on it.

So, I don't think the musical themes are integrated to a "near perfect musical tapestry", nor do I think that this is a "rich and satisfying" work. If you want to call me "wrong" then fine, but it's not exactly an objective statement on your part. We're not exactly discussing matters of fact.

Often ALW is very good at achieving consistent sound universe that you can associate with each particular show. He achieves that very well even in Phantom, despite the fact the score ranges from Gilbert-and-Sullivan-type patter songs in the Managers' scenes to rock in the title song. And that's helped through the orchestrations. Here it's a bit all over the place and the various pieces jar rather than gel. If they don't for you, then great; they do for me.

I thought the orchestrations sounded cheap and tacky. 

The director isn't the only one with the vision, of course, and a lot of the blame should be apportioned to the creatives too. But sometimes a good director can tell writers when their work isn't up to scratch and to up their game. Hal Prince certainly did that (without him, we'd have been stuck with 'The Lady's Got Potential' in Evita and 'Papers' in Phantom). Laurence Connor is not a director of that kind.

I personally loved the show, but the band was the biggest issue for me. 2 violins, 1 violin/viola, 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 French horn, 1 flute/clarinet and 1 keys/guitars. MD sometimes played keys. In the programme, they do "let you know" the original keyboards are prerecorded, however, most of the music is. No live percussion, no live trumpets, and most of the orchestral parts taken from the cast recording.

Connor is a yes man, plain and simple. As a result it is a musical directed by committee & it’s composer. There is no denying that tonally it is all over the place. Additionally, I think the book writing is cringeworthy in the extreme, and nowhere near the twisty feminist fable I was expecting. ALW has clearly aimed it at pre and teenage girls and what he sees as the stereotype of a gay man, leaving everyone else scratching their heads. As someone previous has said so many loose threads are introduced and left hanging, and therefore missed opportunities for ‘bringing it together’ a lot more successfully.