![]() The good girls of fairy land – Snow and Cin and Rap and Pea and the rest – meet weekly for their “Scroll Club,” a precursor to Oprah’s Book Club long before any of them have actually seen a book, must less read one (they’re purposely kept uneducated and uninformed by the omniscient, tyrannical and terribly sexist Narrator, played by The Lehman Brother‘s Adam Godley). Hartmere’s greatest stroke of inspiration is to magically introduce The Feminine Mystique, that Bible of ’60s feminism, into the mix. What Six does for Tudor England Once Upon a One More Time does for long-fractured fairy tales.īut as a wise yet very bad wizard might have said – no, he’s not here – there’s one thing those shows haven’t got: Betty Friedan. Yes, we’ve seen these characters – not the original characters, the revisionist characters – before, the wiser modernized interpretations of their Grimm counterparts, more feminist, more lusty, more open to LGBTQ+ sympathies than anything from Golden Age Disney. Hartmere and the Madrids have taken the best of those shows and sprinkled their own personality all over ’em. Upon closer inspection you’ll recognize some of them, including Justin Guarini of American Idol fame and more than a few stage productions here making a big leap into Broadway stardom.īut the wish-come-true of Once Upon a One More Time is that it lifts without apology or even a slight blush. ![]() Husband and wife director & choreographers Keone & Mari Madrid have collaborated with book writer Jon Hartmere to come up with a technicolor confection that’s clever enough to play dumb once in a while, giddy enough to make a few points along the way and so winningly performed it seems a collection of beauties, princesses, charmings and mermaids arrived fully formed from some magic land of Broadway make-believe. ![]() Smart, funny, splendid to look at and all with a beat you can dance to, this tribute to the Brothers Grimm, the sisters of the Second Wave and, not least, the indomitable Ms. Bad Cinderella could have been the poison apple that killed off revisionist fairy tales once and for all, but Britney Spears and Once Upon A One More Time, the new Broadway musical opening tonight that brims with her hits and high spirits, has come along to deliver a happy ever after that’s as unexpected as it is enchanting. ![]()
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