Naveen Kumar The addition of “bad” to the title of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest maximalist spectacle, formerly known simply as “Cinderella” when it premiered for a short-lived run on the West End in 2021, would seem like a cleverly self-conscious move.
Was it preemptive self-defense against Broadway reviews like this one, that would apply aesthetic judgment to the musical’s gauche bonanza of too-muchness?
Would its version of Cinderella be — you know, a bad girl, but in a sexually liberated (and feminist!) way? Or was it a rare bit of truth in advertising?
To clear up the obvious question, “Bad Cinderella,” which opened at the Imperial Theater Thursday night, isn’t good. Composed by Webber and with lyrics by David Zippel, it is a muddled and momentum-less retooling of the familiar fairy tale in search of a coherent point of view as if it were a glass-slippered foot.
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