Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Bad Cinderella opened last night at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway.
The show had an unsuccessful run last year in the West End (you can read our review here), and now the American reviewers give their unanimously negative reviews.
The Washington Post: Andrew Lloyd Webber's ‘Bad Cinderella' gets the title it deserves. An evening of desultory juvenile antics awaits theatregoers at Broadway's Imperial Theatre.
New York Post: It's a mess with multiple personality disorder. From start to finish during this perplexing and often dull fairytale spin — and, oh, does it spin — you're never entirely sure what you're watching or why you're watching it.
NYT: Not just because the songs in “Bad Cinderella,” the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that opened on Thursday at the Imperial Theater, are so crushingly loud. The dialogue, too, would benefit from inaudibility.
For that matter, bring eye plugs: The sets and costumes are as loud as the songs. If there were such a thing as soul plugs, I'd recommend them as well.
The Observer: The fact that Genao is a poor actor with a grating, nasal voice, and negative comic timing makes Cinderella less appealing than the gyrating cartoons around her. Pairing Fennell's quippy and shallow book with lyricist David Zippel's strenuously slangy lyrics and Andrew Lloyd Webber's lugubrious, syrupy music might have screamed cross-generational synergy on paper, but it's a woeful marriage: TikTok meets grandfather clock.
Broadway News: ‘Bad Cinderella' is an uninspired derivative of the famous tale
Time Out New York: Bad Cinderella is the kind of show that seems destined to be left behind. It's a shiny glass slip-up.
Variety: Andrew Lloyd Webber's Muddled, Sexed-Up, Broadway Spin on the Fairy Tale Is True to Its Name