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

All the seats are still there, some just have pieces of paper attached to them to indicate that they shouldn’t be sat in.

There are ALW songs like Only You, Lonely You, Far Too Late, Bad Cinderella and I know I have a Heart that all jump out at you immediately. Great melodies, and like most ALW ballads, pop type songs, musical chorus anthems, recitative or uptempo numbers - the wonderful melodies jump out at you the VERY FIRST time you hear them. You don’t have to listen to them 4 times. You come out whistling Phantom of the Opera or Jelicle Cats or With One Look. That’s why he’s made his millions! He was an incredible composer and genius.

That’s why this new show is so disappointing. Cinderella let’s all be honest here. has 4 decent songs in it and the rest are just fillers and speak singing patter songs.

I’ll stick with Evita, Cats, Starlight, Phantom, Sunset, JCS, Joseph, Aspects of Love, School of Rock, Beautiful Game, Tell Me On a Sunday and even 60 per cent of Woman in White / they are all worth listening to and owning the CD.

I don't see using the term 'freedom day' as anything to congratulate him for. Appalling language. We have gone through, and are still going through, a pandemic and have rightly had restrictions. It is also a phrase often used by anti lockdowm, anti vaxxers, daily mail etc and diminishes what has happened in the last year. He and CHF have often come across as dismissing the seriousness of the pandemic and this is further proof. And he is rightly being called out for it online, including by NHS staff.

Up until the pandemic I was a fan of him but his attitude over the last 15 months has been disappointing.

No. You’ve misread what I meant. Most shows I go in cold snd watch for the first time. The Prom on Broadway i went in cold and came away loving it and wanting to download the soundtrack asap - every song was a memorable hit. It’s the same for most Andrew Lloyd Webber. Even School of Rock was a super show with lots of memorable melodic song.

Cinderella has 4 songs in it. 5 if you include Marry for love - which is hardly sang in the show. All have been released already. Not one decent duet. The others are all sadly…. in my opinion of low quality. The fact no duet has been released proves this. Even Woman in White has I Believe my Heart!

What a lovely gesture to donate tickets to NHS workers! I'd say give one to me please, 'cos I loved this show at the Saturday matinee, but then they deserve them more lol.

Spoilers follow. . .

In my opinion, Lloyd Webber's work in this is far more impressive than just 4 or 5 songs, as "So Long" & "I Know You" have ravishingly contagious and beautiful melodies that may be lost in the back and forth drama of the former, and the comic gold of the latter, but which come into their full melodious heartrendingness in "The Cinderella Waltz" and "The Ball" in Act 2, when those themes dominate the proceedings as the stage turns and the show is at it's most magical, inviting the front row into the dance, and bringing the ball to the audience behind.

Further, I thought "The Wedding March" theme, later sung as "Marry for Love," is one of the most beautiful marches I have heard and, listening to the London Gay Men's Chorus sing it on youtube ( ) right now, confirms my opinion, for myself, anyway lol.

In fact, this is my favourite show I've seen titled "Cinderella:" Walt Disney's 1950 animation was a glorified Tom and Jerry cartoon where only the cat had any charisma; the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1957 TV movie was hampered by a stale story and undramatic storytelling in which Cinderella and the Sisters were basically pals, though I do agree you can't put Julie Andrews in a Corner (her "In my own little Corner" was fabulous lol); and while the Kenneth Branagh film did successfully hammer the drama by having Cate Blanchett absolutely torture Lily James, the romance was flaccid, the characterisations dull and Disney’s best songs were relegated to the credits.

So I had MUCH more fun seeing THIS show than watching any of those works!

Anyway, I concede that this show will probably have a "Love Never Dies" trajectory, with another version popping up in the future, as the storytelling at the moment is insufficiently focused to give Lloyd Webber's songs their due.

Regarding the story, I don't agree the show should end with Cinderella dumping Prince Sebastian and walking off into the distance, as that would invalidate the whole show. The songs are clear on this: Cinderella is feminist and free from the very beginning, and has effectively already walked off into the distance from the get-go: as "Bad Cinderella," she is the only person in town to engage in free thinking, rebelling against the town's superficial values ("Buns and Roses," "Hunks' song," "Man's Man" & "I Know Her"). Her problem is that in her her rebellion against all and sundry, she recognises her need for connection, with another human being, late in the day ("I know I have a heart because you broke it"), makes all the wrong decisions about how to achieve love ("Beauty has a Price"), tries to redeem herself ("Ego has a Price") but by then it is "Far Too Late" to sing a love song. Love is the only thing that can redeem BOTH the town AND Cinderella ("Marry for Love").

So the story this show wants to tell is two parts Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" and one part Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus." Like Fanny Price in "Mansfield Park," Cinderella has grown up being best friends with the younger son of a higher status family, as well as being a bit of a skivvy. As in "Mansfield Park," complications ensue, but things work out in the end. The complications in this Cinderella are those of "Dr Faustus," whereby Mephistopheles tempts Faustus to lose his soul to gain the world. In the conception of this Cinderella, Gloria Onitiri's Godmother is Mephistopheles, seducing Cinderella to go back on her rejection of conformist beauty culture and doll-up for Sebastian. This leads to Cinderella's downfall before Jane Austen beats up Christopher Marlowe to give us the ending we want.

This story is a GOOD one, and properly told, Lloyd Webber's songs would have your heart soaring and weeping and exulting.

However, the storytelling misfires somewhat because:

(1) Cinderella is not sympathetically portrayed. I mean, can you imagine the newspaper coverage if a childhood chum of Prince Harry deliberately defaced a statue of Prince William, got away with it with a one-day-slap-on-the-wrist, did it again repeatedly, and only got a slap on the wrist every single time? Would you love that character? Obviously, the show posits that Cinderella is validly rebelling against a narcissistic culture that values looks over heart, but still, she's Prince Seb's bestie, and she's defacing the statue of a "dead" man!

(2) The show fails to establish any real stakes for Cinderella until the end of Act 1. Her stepmother is a marvellous comic creation by Victoria Hamilton-Barritt, but unlike Cate Blanchett squashing Lily James like a bug in the Branagh Cinderella, this relatively likeable (she's more funny and relatable than evil) Stepmother simply seems more frightened that Cinderella will make another terrifying "scene" lol! I mean, how do you really scare a girl brave anough to scale statues, break the law and laugh in the face of violent mobs? Answer, you can't. At the end of Act 1, when Cinderella decides she loves Sebastian and starts making poor choices about how to achieve her love, that's the first moment the show presents any stakes for Cinderella, which is "far too late to sing" the principal drama of a main character.

(3) This is why Prince Sebastian appears to BE the main character during Act 1. His own mother's emasculating humiliation of him in the mid-act song in which she implies he's not a "Man's Man" is the first moment of real drama in the show, and engages the audience in the story properly, rooting for poor Sebastian. Sebastian's retort, "Only you, lonely You," works so well precisely because he is responding to such a crushingly dramatic situation. For the audience, this is confusing, as it makes all the stuff about Cinderella that happens earlier feel like filler, and it is as if the story only begins at this point.

(4) Because Cinderella's own story only engages at the very end of Act 1, when she visits the Godmother, her story feels truncated, and the full impact of her heartbreaking songs in Act 2 aren't realised to their fullest (I'd say they have about 75 percent impact that they could and should have, although I confess to tearing up massively in both "I know I Have a Heart" and "Far too Late").

(5) SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER: The resolution to the story emerges from the appearance of Prince Charming, as a deus-ex-machina, at the very end. This is intended to rouse and amuse, like Romeo in "And Juliet," which to an extent it does, but the story has not done the work to integrate Charming into the narrative in the same way "And Juliet" integrates Romeo, so there is less emotional impact. Further, "Marry for Love" is one of Lloyd Webber's strongest songs, and is here sung by a character we have no reason to care about, which squanders it's impact.

Anyway, these issues are fixable for some future iteration of the show.

One possible fix could see the introduction of the Godmother earlier, so she could tempt Cinderella into wanting to be "beautiful" from the beginning. Cinderella could resist, only to cave in later. We would then understand the stakes for Cinderella earlier, sympathise with her vulnerability to something so relatable, as beauty culture, which to an extent we all worry about. It is difficult to dramatise the threat of beauty culture to girls, and in the Godmother, Emerald Fennell has come up with a good avatar to do it, so why limit this character to one song?

Antother possible fix could see Cinderella and/or Sebastian overhearing and singing along to "Marry for Love" at the very end, alone and out of sight of the Wedding Party. This would lend the song the weight of characters-we-actually-care-about, which is a weight this amazing song deserves.

Regardless of storytelling faux-pas, if you book this, you do get theatrical wonders for your money:

(1) A score full of delicious Lloyd Webber soulfulness as well as sides of Lloyd Webber rock (eg the Judas-style self-hating anthem "Beauty has a Price") and Lloyd Webber playfulness (eg "I Know You");
(2) Carrie Hope Fletcher belting and emoting "I Know I have a Heart" and "Far Too Late" to heartbreaking effect;
(3) Ivano Turco smashing "Only you, Lonely You,"
(4) Victoria Hamilton-Barritt creating one of her funniest characterisations,
(5) Rebecca Trehearn aping the joyous egotism and narcissism of King George from Hamilton, especially revelling in the superficiality and cruelty of "Man's Man,"
(6) Victoria Hamilton-Barritt and Rebecca Trehearn going mano-a-mano in a comedic verbal wrestling match in "I Know You,"
(7) The privileged audience members joining the dance as the stage spins, while the rest of the audience welcome their absence, with the ball sweeping into the auditorium to magically join them,
(8) the most glorious anthem, "Marry for Love."

So for me, 4 stars of fun, right now, for us to immediately escape to from this pandemic nightmare we've been living in,
with a potential 5 star work to be presented on Broadway or in Australia one day that we'll all be angry we aren't seeing lol!

Totally agree, thats a great analysis and they would be wise to take that feedback onboard.

I made the same point a couple of weeks ago and wondered if any of the creative team were board members.
Research and opinions straight from the horses mouth so to speak.

Tickets now available for the 19th July - including cheap ones in the moving section!

Not that Mark84 could have known, but now that Mark Shenton has done a screenshot of this post and shared on Twitter I feel rather sorry for CHF. Lloyd Webber's pronouncements are not her speaking, and I've only seen her say that while disappointing they have to play to reduced capacity, it is better to comply and at least be open.

I think comparing to other mass events with far fewer control measures than theatres is observation, and not "dismissing the seriousness of the pandemic". Of course, that's available to be countered with other views, quite fairly.

Well I'm booked for the self named "freedom day" performance.... Looking forward to ditching my visor and soaking up the atmosphere of a full theatre. The prices are very reasonable!

£100 tickets reduced to £19.50
What did I do to deserve this @alw

They're not honest if you state "I find the colour blind casting questionable (why is the Queen white?)" but in a post soon after say "But this would mean that the three main love affair relationships in the entire show are mixed race.  I could question that but I really don't want to go down the race/demographic/colour blind casting route with my review" - even though you just did.

Triggered?  haha - you really do think too much of yourself.  It's par for the course that you open up a subject, and then suggest you're closing it down, magically having the last word.  So, just as you ended a post in another thread about casting (in order to close others down and 'win' the argument) :

"moving on".