THEATER REVIEW – “Cinderella”

The villagers, led by Paige Faure as Cinderella, are excited about being invited to the royal ball. Photo by Carol Rosegg
Aymee Garcia as elder step-sister Charlotte (center, in hot pink) at the royal ball. Photo by Carol Rosegg

Aymee Garcia as elder step-sister Charlotte (center, in hot pink) at the royal ball. Photo by Carol Rosegg

Revamped musical tries hard to be relevant

As musical collaborators, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had a number of success stories, from “Oklahoma!” to “The Sound of Music,” but “Cinderella” (written for TV) wasn’t one of them, relatively speaking. Even so, it’s a timeless fairy tale, and it’s been dusted off for a new generation by Douglas Carter Beane. He’s cleaned house a little in an attempt to make the story topical and to inject it with some good-hearted humor.

With its moral that one should be kind and gentle even to those who don’t seem to deserve it, “Cinderella” is solid enough at its core, but what happens when we step in to modernize a tale that dates back three or four centuries? Well, as Carter Beane shows us, you can make some blunders.

Well, we know the story. There’s a simple but charming young girl whose mother dies and whose father then marries a woman with two daughters of her own. Then the father dies and the stepmother furthers the fortunes of her own offspring at the expense of the one who isn’t. Fortunately, the latter has a fairy godmother (known today as a press agent) and so in the end she snags the handsome prince.

Marie, the Fairy Godmother (Kecia Lewis) and Cinderella (Paige Faure). Photo by Carol Rosegg

Marie, the Fairy Godmother (Kecia Lewis) and Cinderella (Paige Faure). Photo by Carol Rosegg

At the moment, we have “Cinderella” on the big screen, directed by Kenneth Branagh, and “Cinderella” at the Ahmanson Theatre, directed by Mark Brokaw. It’s the latter we’re interested in, but the film version will overshadow us from here on out.

The inspiration for Carter Beane’s reinterpretation draws heavily from Disney and Disney-styled musicals of the last couple of decades in which the heroines are healthy, wholesome, cheerful, and always spunky. They may blush a little, here and there, in order to exude some girlish femininity, but many of them also seem a little pushy and even narcissistic. It’s not hard to understand why, at a time when we want our daughters to feel confident and empowered, and in a subtle way these musicals and movies provide a pep talk that essentially tells these young ladies that they can take charge of their own destiny.

Few can argue with that premise, but musicals needn’t be self-help books in disguise. Fairy tales often contain terrible and tragic events, and no one is helped if these events are ignored or deleted. In the tale of Tom Thumb, for example, the ogre slits the throats of his seven daughters. Not on purpose, of course. Seven little boys were actually the intended victims.

At any rate, to soften the original harshness of “Cinderella,” Carter Beane made its characters rather cartoonish. This is especially true of the Prince (Andy Huntington Jones), here called Topher, preferably short for Christopher, which makes us wince. Topher? Really? But that’s not the half of it. Topher comes across as a nerd, and without the smarts a future kingpin will require. In this version, he’s an orphan, the affairs of the royal domain in the hands of the regent Sebastian (Branch Woodman), who at times seems more like a stern joker: He has more quips than Oscar Wilde.

The idea behind turning Topher into an orphan was so that he would have a stronger connection with Cinderella, also an orphan by this time. However, the Prince needs to be better grounded. In Branagh’s version, the Prince (Richard Madden) has a seemingly wise and noble father (played by the seemingly wise and noble Derek Jacobi). Madden may be a little cocksure of himself in this role, but, again, we see the blood lineage, and he’s clearly not a dimwit – just obsessed with the mysterious young woman who turns up at the royal ball.

Kaitlyn Davidson as younger step-sister Gabrielle and David Andino as Jean-Michel (when he’s not performing as Jerry Garcia, that is). Photo by Carol Rosegg

Kaitlyn Davidson as younger step-sister Gabrielle and David Andino as Jean-Michel (when he’s not performing as Jerry Garcia, that is). Photo by Carol Rosegg

Presumably none of this is the fault of Huntington Jones, who seems somewhat generic, as does Paige Faure who stars as Cinderella. Good actors, both, but not memorable.

The Stepmother, or Madame (Fran Drescher) and her two daughters, Charlotte (Aymee Garcia) and Gabrielle (Kaitlyn Davidson), are not really evil – as sometimes referred to – so much as insufferably vain. This being a musical they are caricatures rather than characters, especially in their outrageous costumes (courtesy of William Ivey Long). In these outfits, the girls and their mother are spring gardens in full bloom. Of the three, Drescher really goes over the top, especially with her nasal and raspy delivery, capped by a kind of Joan Rivers nastiness. But that’s pretty much what the role calls for, and Cate Blanchett is also arrogant and cutting and snobbish in the current film treatment.

As the eldest stepsister, Aymee Garcia is plump and hardly a knockout in the looks department, but she has a liveliness on stage we won’t quickly forget. The younger sister, on the other hand, seems more repressed than actively mean, and Carter Beane has even tried to make her sympathetic so that – as in “The King and I” (“Hello, Young Lovers”) or “South Pacific” (“Younger Than Springtime”) – a secondary love interest can emerge into a story that previously didn’t have one. This takes us down an uncertain path.

Attempting to justify his artistic tinkering with the storyline, Carter Beane says that in the version of the fairy tale by Charles Perrault “one of the evil stepsisters turned out to be okay; she helped Cinderella and had a boyfriend!” Well, I don’t think so. Cinderella is actually called Cinder-slut (or Cinder-wench in Andrew Lang’s retelling). However, “The younger of the two sisters, who was not quite so spiteful as the elder, called her Cinderella.” There’s nothing about a “boyfriend.”

No matter. Charlotte now has a love interest named Jean-Michel (David Andino), and he’s a Jerry Garcia lookalike who’s crusading for social reform. Like Prince Topher, Jean-Michel is also somewhat awkward and nerdy. He leads a protest rally or two, and there are moments when we seem closer to the 1960s than to to the 1600s or whatever. Was raising class consciousness an issue back then? Has it been an unspoken part of “Cinderella” all along and we just didn’t know it?

Cinderella herself admonishes Topher for not being aware of the social inequality in the domain he will one day govern. Surprisingly or not, he seems all too willing to acknowledge their grievances, and we can almost imagine democratic elections come November. But of course the Regent and the court would quickly squelch any groundswell of reform were Topher to try and capitulate to the people’s demands.

The villagers, led by Paige Faure as Cinderella, are excited about being invited to the royal ball. Photo by Carol Rosegg

The villagers, led by Paige Faure as Cinderella, are excited about being invited to the royal ball. Photo by Carol Rosegg

While all this has a certain relevance to the modern era, the lyrics of the songs don’t quite mesh with the new tone of the reworked book – a glass slipper that doesn’t quite fit, you might say. And one may perhaps wonder how Cinderella, who has also become socially enlightened by Jean-Michel’s speeches, can then go off and marry someone whose job is to hold onto power at all costs, and to keep his subjects repressed.

Of course, it’s only a musical, isn’t it? a glorified cartoon – although at the same time a buoyant musical that will enchant most viewers, especially with the seamless, almost magical costume changes virtually in mid-stride or mid-swirl for Cinderella or for Marie, her fairy godmother (the exuberant Kecia Lewis). I just think that one should be a little wary of classic fairy tales that are subtly reworked to be less like “Bluebeard” and more like – too much more like – “Frozen.” There’s a whiff of the unsavory here, but the show itself is very well staged, and only a fairy tale ogre would say otherwise.

Cinderella” is onstage at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles in the Music Center. Performances, Tuesday through Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. There is also a 2 p.m. performance on Thursday, April 23. Closes after the matinee on Sunday, April 26. Tickets, $25 to $150. Call (213) 972-4400 or go to CenterTheatreGroup.org.

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