Writers: Jodie Prenger and Neil Hurst
Director: Lizzy Connolly
It is a big panto year for Cinderellas with versions at the Lyric Hammersmith and Brixton House, and now a parody musical version at The Other Palace Studio written by Jodie Prenger and Neil Hurst. Given a modern and very theatrical setting staged against a sparkly pink backdrop, A Very Very Bad Cinderella is a naughty send-up of not only Andrew Lloyd Webber’s now notorious musical but also plenty of other theatre shows and stories. A little light on content, however, the show relies on its stars to give it a larger-than-life appeal.
The basic story remains perhaps disappointingly the same; two ugly sisters prevent their poorer sibling Cinderella from going to the Prince’s ball. So this glorified housekeeper enlists the help of a fairy godmother. However, the promised badness from the protagonist and the premise remain rather anodyne and indeed Cinderella herself is the same well-behaved family drudge she always was regardless of the new setting in the mythical end-of-the-line suburb of BellEnd.
None of these characters looks like their fairy tale incarnations but they do behave that way, although perhaps the ugly sisters – Fanny and Vajayjay – are perhaps a little nicer to her, including her in an early family dance routine and speaking to her before determining she cannot attend the ball. Where Prenger and Hurst have modernised is in the sex-obsessed nature of the sisters and the inclusion of pop culture references from the Made in the Chelsea Prince and a brief appearance of Gordon the Gopher to include a Philip Schofield reference that floats around plotlessly for a moment before the show moves on.
What A Very Very Bad Cinderella does very well is stage references that are woven through the story, some obvious like the show’s title and the music that Prenger and Hurst borrow from its inspiration, but other nods are more subtle such as when Blood Brothers lyrics are incorporated into the dialogue. An excellent story told by Vajayjay using, or slightly misusing, the titles of theatre shows is a clever piece of writing. The best joke is a visual one, a video recording of a mysterious character moving around backstage before arriving right on cue that mimics Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Boulevard that applies the same technique to his show, here an affectionate dig at one of the year’s great theatre moments.
These are fun and well-executed ideas but it still leaves you wishing that the plot itself had been more daring, more willing to throw preconceptions of Cinderella in the air, but instead this production at The Other Palace essentially creates a period setting; it just happens to be a contemporary Towie meets Made in Chelsea one. The great performances, however, certainly lift the material with both Imelda Warren-Green as Vajayjay and Veronica Green as Fanny doing some particularly heavy lifting as the loud, lairy man-obsessed sisters with gutter minds. Warren-Green in particular has a powerhouse voice that is used to great effect in the songs that pay homage to modern pop classics. May Tether’s Cinderella is very likeable and performs some great numbers while Keanna Bloomfield makes a meta virtue of having to play both Buttons and the Prince.
There are a lot of great ideas in A Very Very Bad Cinderella which though only 40-minutes each way manages to cram in at least one round of “oh no it isn’t,” lots of boos and some risky audience interaction – picking a critic at press night to perform on stage. But with so many Cinderellas to choose from, this one could have been badder.
Runs until 7 January 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Not bad enough
