I have to be honest, I had so very much been looking forward to going to watch Hope Mills Theatre's production of Cinderella, which sadly didn't happen due to the coronavirus lockdown, I found a pirate video recording of the 2013 Broadway production on YouTube and gave that a go. Obviously being an amateur video, then the quality wasn't great, and we did have backs-of-heads and people moving into shot etc, but it wasn't so bad as not to be able to watch and glean some idea of what the production would have been like if seen live.
On a stage similar in size to most West End theatres the team were able to bring some imaginative and lovely sets and great lighting touches. The costumes were nothing short of the 'traditional' style we associate with the story, being far more familiar to UK audiences in pantomime form than any other. The transformations were good, and the carriage and horses etc worked very well.
Some of the dancing I found a little pedestrian. Whether this was due to the costume and stage size / set constraints or not I am uncertain but it didn't look very imaginative or exciting from my perspective, and much of the obvious US humour, and ways of saying things - perhaps just the vocal intonations which are more accepted in the States than here - did begin to grate after a while, especially from Ann Horada who played one of the ugly sisters with an OTT style of comedy and irritating voice which simply made me feel ill. However they were on 'home turf' so to speak and playing to the majority audience who seemed to be lapping it up.
In general I enjoyed the show, although, I assume simply because I was watching an amatuer recording of it, it did seem to lack atmosphere and 'shazzam'. Joe Carroll was Prince Topher and was the typical cardboard cut-out monodimensional prince from the pantomimes we are all familiar with. I had hoped that with this being a Musical with a little more substance, there might have been something else Carroll could have brought to the table but seemingly not. Cinderella herself was played by Carly Rae Jepses, and this was her Broadway debut. She coped well with the role, looking and sounding right, but she could have benefitted from more vocal / breathing control expertise; she was forever running out of breath in some very short phrases.
The two characters to stand out for me were Victoria Clark, who played an old lady in the wooods who transforms into Cinderella's Fairy Godmother, and Fran Drescher who gave a superb performance as a caring, strict, misguided, nasty (but not too much) stepmother, who for some inexplicable reason seemed to be called 'Madame'.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 1/7/20
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