Once Upon a One More Time (Play)

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    Feminist Stories Are Being Set to a Pop Beat. But Are They Empowering?

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    Our critics debate how well shows like “Six,” “& Juliet” and “Once Upon a One More Time” engage with the inner worlds of women onstage.During the first act of “Once Upon a One More Time,” the Broadway jukebox musical that grooves to the Britney Spears oeuvre, a fairy godmother arrives with a present for Cinderella. A gown? No. Glass slippers? No. Cin has enough already. Instead, her godmother gifts her a copy of Betty Friedan’s 1963 best seller, “The Feminine Mystique.”It’s a clumsy gesture in the show, which plans to close next month. (Feminist thought has advanced in 60 years!) And arguably emblematic of a recent spate of Broadway musicals that set feminism to a pop beat, including “Six,” a zippy modern retelling of the lives of Henry VIII’s six wives; “& Juliet,” whose protagonist, miraculously alive, embarks on a girls’ trip of self-discovery; and “Bad Cinderella” (now closed), a chaotic rejiggering of the classic fairy tale. Aimed at girls and women (historically the majority of Broadway ticket buyers), these shows may be sincere attempts to engage with women’s issues — or they’re hollow efforts to capitalize on calls for change. Empty political gestures on Broadway? To quote a song used in two of these shows: “Oops! … I did it again.”On a recent morning, Laura Collins-Hughes, contributing theater critic and reporter; Salamishah Tillet, critic at large; and Lindsay Zoladz, pop music critic, gathered to debate facts and fairy tales. They discussed how narrowly these shows define empowerment, if they define it at all, and why Prince Charming gets the best song. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The recent musicals “Six,” “& Juliet,” “Bad Cinderella” and “Once Upon a One More Time” take female empowerment as their central theme. Are these shows actually empowering or legibly feminist?LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES I wouldn’t say any of them are feminist.SALAMISHAH TILLET Some are empowering, others are not. “Six” is partly feminist, because it shows the impact of King Henry VIII’s misogyny. With the exception of Anne Boleyn, most of his wives have been relegated to the margins. My 11-year-old daughter really loved that these women finally reclaimed their stories and did it with style! But I felt like I was at a fun pop concert rather than at a big Broadway musical.COLLINS-HUGHES “Six” drives me completely up the wall. It wants to have a good time in the neighborhood of spousal murder and abandonment, singing “I don’t need your love.” As if Henry’s love had anything to do with it. As if abuse is what a man’s love for a woman looks like.Lauren Zakrin, second from left, as Little Mermaid gets her voice back upon reading “The Feminine Mystique” in “Once Upon a One More Time.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLINDSAY ZOLADZ I like “Six,” but probably for the reason Salamishah doesn’t — it’s basically a pop concert. I do think the overarching problem with these musicals is the way they fail to define terms, presenting “empowerment” and “feminism” as given, unexamined virtues. Instead of the marriage proposal that supposedly leads to the happily ever after, it’s … empowerment ever after? “Once Upon a One More Time” provided the clearest distillation of the trend. Cinderella’s “feminist awakening” is spurred by her fairy godmother giving her “The Feminine Mystique.” Seriously. The book is treated like a magical talisman throughout the rest of the show, but its actual content is never engaged with. That seems beyond the show’s grasp. Though the book is on sale for $20 in the lobby gift shop.TILLET I gasped when she discovered the book.ZOLADZ Not in a good way, I’m guessing.Doesn’t Cinderella know that women’s studies syllabuses have moved on?TILLET Or that Friedan was heavily criticized for her bourgeois feminism back in the day? Is it weird that we are still locating the beginnings of feminism exclusively in the sexual liberation of straight, white, middle-class, stay-at-home 1950s wives? But that’s an ongoing problem, not just on Broadway.Why do you think we’re seeing these shows now? Is it a cynical attempt to appeal to female ticket buyers or something more organic?TILLET These shows, despite their best intentions, seem limited by their source material. There was a lot of Cinderella this year! The publicity appeal of anything Cinderella is obvious, so for Broadway theaters struggling to get audiences back into the theater, of course it is a ploy.From left: Justin David Sullivan, Melanie La Barrie, Lorna Courtney and Betsy Wolfe in “& Juliet.” With its thoughtful casting of a Black Juliet and the nonbinary character May, the show enables us to see Shakespeare differently, one critic said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCOLLINS-HUGHES “Bad Cinderella” could have been so much more than it was. It is a messy show, it’s always been a messy show, but in London it was actually fun. It had a bit of substance to it. And magic. The feminism, which was so clear and so dramatically propulsive in the London version, was wiped away for Broadway.I took my daughter to “Bad Cinderella” and afterward we had a conversation about the show’s messaging, which was confused at best. Is it asking too much of a musical to also have great messages?COLLINS-HUGHES This question makes me think we all live in fear of that riposte that often greets girls and women who won’t laugh along at a joke that’s not funny: “Where’s your sense of humor?” It’s perfectly legitimate to recoil from a show whose message bugs you, and all the more if it’s at odds with its girl-power, you-be-you marketing.And yet if a show is successful enough in other ways, the messaging may not matter. That was my delighted experience of “& Juliet.”TILLET This was definitely my favorite pop feminist musical of the year. I was genuinely intrigued by the conceit of what happens if Juliet doesn’t die. What life does she make for herself beyond the formula prescribed for her? The musical opens up possibilities for her as a protagonist. And with its thoughtful casting of Lorna Courtney as a Black Juliet and Justin David Sullivan as the nonbinary character, May, it enables us to see Shakespeare differently, too.COLLINS-HUGHES When it has a top-notch cast, “& Juliet” is a blast. But I am baffled that people perceive it as feminist. It really is not.ZOLADZ Say more!COLLINS-HUGHES I don’t mean that it’s anti-feminist, but I don’t think it’s particularly female-centered — not on Juliet, nor on Anne Hathaway [Shakespeare’s wife], who gets one of the subplots.“Bad Cinderella,” starring Linedy Genao, had a brief run this spring. “The feminism, which was so clear and so dramatically propulsive in the London version, was wiped away for Broadway,” one critic said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWith the exception of “Six,” these shows are largely created by men. Does that explain anything?COLLINS-HUGHES Of course. It’s not that men can’t and don’t write women well or can’t imagine women’s lives. And it’s certainly not that artists should stick to writing only about people just like them. But they are writing from the outside. That can come with a lot of blind spots and a lot of misapprehensions.All of these musicals use a pop vernacular, “Bad Cinderella” somewhat less so. Is pop, particularly pop written and produced by men, a useful form for feminist discourse?ZOLADZ Something I’ve been thinking about regarding “Once Upon a One More Time” and especially “& Juliet,” which uses the songs of the massive millennial hitmaker Max Martin, is the lyrical limitation of a lot of modern pop music. Martin and the generation of pop architects who followed him treat lyrics almost as an afterthought. Martin has referred to his method of songwriting as “melodic math.” “& Juliet” was fun and more cleverly written than “Once Upon a One More Time,” but a lot of that had to do with the ironic distance between the lyrics themselves and the winking, metatextual way the characters employed them — like when “I Want It That Way,” by the Backstreet Boys, becomes not so much a love song as a narration of an argument between Shakespeare and his wife, who have conflicting opinions about how his latest play should end.TILLET I hated a lot of those pop songs and found them anti-feminist when they originally came out, but when I sang along with the “& Juliet” audience and my tween daughter, I found that they aged better than I had expected. Or maybe, because I’m now middle-age, I’m mistaking nostalgia for progress.COLLINS-HUGHES Inattention to lyrics is a limitation of jukebox musicals, but it doesn’t hold for original pop songs, which can be whatever the writer makes them. It would help, though, if more of the songwriters getting musicals produced were women.ZOLADZ I generally pay more attention to pop music than Broadway musicals, so I found the sound of these shows to be quite striking. Modern pop’s influence is everywhere, especially in a show like “Six,” which is full of electronic beats, hip-hop cadences and direct nods to artists like Beyoncé and Ariana Grande. Is that a trend you have observed over time? And given that this is such a golden age for female pop stars, do you think that crossover appeal has something to do with the rise of these empowerment musicals?COLLINS-HUGHES Musically, “Hamilton” changed Broadway, but it is very much a guy story. Having proved the hunger for modern pop musicals, it left a lot of room for female artists to fill.Do these shows do that filling?COLLINS-HUGHES Musically? Sometimes. But in terms of storytelling, generally no. There are such blinders on imagination, and there’s such an aversion to nuance. It’s a question of whom you’re trying to please. The perception of risk is about displeasing men, not the women and girls who might want to see smart, muscular new musicals.Megan Hilty, left, and Shoshana Bean in “Wicked,” which is partly about a girl learning to harness the power of her outrage to fight against injustice in the world.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDoes the success of the Barbie movie, directed and co-written by a woman, with its several song and dance numbers, point a way forward?COLLINS-HUGHES Absolutely, if the idea is to give the best numbers to the guys.ZOLADZ And the charisma! That’s what ultimately sank “Once Upon a One More Time” for me: Cinderella was often the least compelling character onstage. Juliet didn’t fare much better. I don’t know if blandly “empowered” female characters are the answer. Too often it just feels like a shortcut. Writing flawed, idiosyncratic and more interesting female characters seems like a worthier goal, but most of these shows don’t want to take the risk.TILLET If song choice in a musical is any indication of narrative priorities, “Once Upon a One More Time” had difficulty sustaining its attention on Cinderella and her awakening. Prince Charming got “Oops! … I Did It Again” and her stepmother had “Toxic.” When I watched “Barbie,” I realized how seductive patriarchy is onscreen or onstage, even when we say we are trying to smash it. Why do the Kens get that massive and amazing dance scene?COLLINS-HUGHES A story about or aimed at women is so seldom deemed interesting enough on its own. But Hollywood, like commercial theater, is often in the business of blandification. And who’s blander than Ken? I’d like to think audiences want more than that.These recent shows define empowerment narrowly, restricting it to questions of romantic and sexual relationships with men rather than any broader political awakenings. Why can’t these stories dream bigger or attempt something more intersectional?TILLET I do think a lot of these producers feel that they are being intersectional, simply through casting. But while I appreciate so much more diversity onstage, it is still not enough. The musicals would really have to try to dismantle various forms of oppression at once. That takes nuance, patience and a really radical imagination. An older musical, “The Color Purple,” was successful at this, which brings us back to the strength of the source material, Alice Walker’s novel, and then a sizable female team behind its Broadway staging. It is an understatement to say that the evolution of Celie, who endured such abuse and trauma, is far more compelling than Cinderella’s!ZOLADZ What I find missing from a lot of contemporary art about female empowerment is the way it focuses on the attainment of power and then stops there. What about stories about how easily power can corrupt those who have it? Yes, even women!COLLINS-HUGHES This is a thing that “Wicked” imagines. And two decades on, it’s still packing houses and making loads of money. That show is partly about a girl learning to harness the power of her outrage to fight against injustice in the world.TILLET I’ve seen “Wicked” twice recently. The depth of the storytelling — when the villain and heroine aren’t what they seem — it is just so good. Is it feminist? Maybe. Does it reveal the power and heartbreak of female friendship as the ultimate love story? Very much so. For that alone, it provides a wonderful model for how to really revel in the inner worlds of women onstage. More

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      ‘Once Upon a One More Time,’ the Britney Spears Musical, Is Closing

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      The show, which was capitalized for $20 million, will end its Broadway run on Sept. 3 after 123 performances. Its producers say they are planning a national tour.“Once Upon a One More Time,” a pop musical using the songs of Britney Spears, will close on Broadway on Sept. 3 after opening to mixed reviews and failing to find an audience.The musical was a costly misfire, capitalized for $20 million at a time when many Broadway shows have been struggling with rising costs and diminished attendance after a pandemic shutdown that made an always challenging industry even more difficult.“Once Upon a One More Time” is about a group of fairy tale heroines whose outlook on their familiar stories is shaken when the book club to which they belong encounters a feminist classic, “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan.The musical features some of Spears’s biggest hits, including “Baby One More Time,” “Toxic” and “Circus.” The songs have several writers but were originally performed and recorded by Spears; the musical’s book is by Jon Hartmere and it was directed and choreographed by Keone and Mari Madrid.The musical was first announced in 2019, with plans for an initial production in Chicago, but that production was delayed until the following spring and then canceled by the pandemic. Ultimately, the show started its first run in late 2021 at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C., where reviews were weak but sales were strong.Spears’s relationship to the show was never clear. The show repeatedly described itself as “fully authorized and licensed post-conservatorship by Britney Spears,” and she wished the cast and crew well on Instagram in June, writing, “I’ve seen the show and it is so funny, smart and brilliant 🤩 !!!”But Spears did not attend a public performance, and her fan base never fully mobilized to see the production. The show’s grosses were soft from the get-go, peaking at $701,425 during the week of its opening, which is not nearly enough to sustain a musical of this scale. During the week that ended Aug. 13, the show played to houses that were only 47 percent full, and grossed just $512,008.The show began previews on May 13 and opened on June 22 at the Marquis Theater. At the time of its closing it will have played 123 performances.The lead producers are James L. Nederlander and Hunter Arnold; they said in a statement on Monday that they were planning a national tour as well as “multiple international productions.”The closing announcement comes at a difficult time for Spears. Last week her husband, Sam Asghari, filed for divorce just over a year after they got married. More

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      This Evil Stepmother Has Perfect Comedic Timing

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      In “Once Upon a One More Time,” Jennifer Simard finds value in seeing “how small you can make something and achieve a big result.”You don’t need to visit a faraway kingdom to see that, in “Once Upon a One More Time,” Jennifer Simard is demonstrating what her devoted following of fans have long known: Her comedic performances sear themselves into the brain, often becoming a show’s selling point.Take, for example, her choice in the first act of this jukebox musical with a fairy tale flavor set to Britney Spears’s songs: Playing Cinderella’s Stepmother, the actress, who has been sitting on the floor in a gargantuan gown, is dressing down her less-than-chic adoptee. Then, midsentence, she back rolls into a standing position — in heels.The move brings the house down, but doesn’t stop the show. Rather, it keeps it all going. As natural as it is indescribably comical, the action makes plain that Simard, 53, is more invested in continuing the larger story.“I had to get up, and it occurred to me that it’s a great juxtaposition between a dress that makes me look like a human feather duster, and ‘Why not?’” she said. “I’m of the school that says you have to take a bunch of spaghetti and throw it at the wall and see what sticks.”The performance is full of Simardisms: big moments of physical comedy and high-flying vocal acrobatics sprinkled shrewdly with a deadpan, almost Mid-Atlantic affect. “She sounds like she’s been drinking cocktails and smoking cigarettes for centuries,” said Mari Madrid, who directed and choreographed the show with her husband, Keone.“The way she developed that moment and turned it into physical comedy was all Jenn,” Madrid said. “When you have someone like that, you have to lean into their ideas.”But the actor also finds value in seeing “how small you can make something and achieve a big result.” During a recent interview at the Moxy hotel in Times Square (selected by Simard because her character “has moxie”), she mentioned a line in which, frustrated with her daughters, her character drolly threatens to boil them.“As written, it’s all in capital letters with a big exclamation point, and that makes sense when you’re typing to convey that she’s angry,” she said. “However, the way to successfully play it is to undercut it as much as possible, because the containment of the rage is funnier than the feeling itself. In the best comedy, it’s what the character is not getting — what they are frustrated about — that’s funniest.”Simard, center, is a star of “Once Upon a One More Time,” with Tess Soltau and Amy Hillner Larsen, at the Marquis Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe same could be said of Simard’s career. She has amassed a loyal following as a sort of “if you know, you know” insider legend. And, as she tells it, she realized her talents while growing up in Litchfield, N.H.Before a visit to a theater in Manchester, N.H., drew her to the stage, she said she idolized “funny, funny women” on TV. These included Madeline Kahn, Anne Bancroft, Bernadette Peters and Barbara Barrie, whose performance in a recording of “Barefoot in the Park” from the early 1980s she called “a lesson in comedic timing.” Simard eventually appeared onstage with Peters in “Hello, Dolly!,” after Peters replaced Bette Midler during that musical’s 2016 revival, and, as Barrie had years before, played Sarah in the recent revival of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical “Company.”“I wasn’t the class clown — I was quite a good girl — but I knew from a very early age that I had that inside of me,” she said. “It’s like Jeanine Tesori said about ‘Fun Home’” in her acceptance speech at the Tony Awards. “Little girls need to see things to believe it’s possible. Having that exposure was so important to why I’m here.”A stint studying musical theater at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee ended after one semester, when Simard booked a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in New Hampshire and, later, a role in “Nunsense” — which began her recurring habit of onstage habits.Armed with improv training in Boston, she moved to New York in 1992, after she was cast in “Forbidden Broadway ’93.” She soon met Seth Rudetsky, who became her vocal coach and later cast her in “Disaster!,” his 2013 Off Broadway musical.In the intervening 20 years, Simard opened in the long-running “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” which earned her the first of four Drama Desk Award nominations, and she made her Broadway debut as a replacement in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” followed by small roles in “Shrek the Musical” and “Sister Act.”“She hit it out of the ballpark when she moved here,” Rudetsky said during a phone call, “and everyone was obsessed with her, but then she was just sort of taking jobs so she could keep working, not showing people what she could do. There are very few roles where someone like her can show everything she can do, and it becomes almost a hindrance.”Rudetsky’s spoof of 1970s disaster films got her closer to that kind of role. As Sister Mary Downy, a gambling-addicted nun, Simard “brought down the house,” he said.She shared the stage with Christopher Sieber and Katrina Lenk in the recent Broadway revival of “Company.” ”She is a scientist,” Sieber said of working with Simard. “There wasn’t a syllable we didn’t discuss.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhen “Disaster!” briefly transferred to Broadway in 2016, her performance — especially her first-act rendition of “Never Can Say Goodbye” — earned the production’s sole Tony nomination and inspired an (ultimately unsuccessful) grass-roots social media campaign, #PutSimardOn, to feature her in that year’s ceremony.“Vocally she got to do the thing she does now during ‘Toxic,’ which is underplay first, then shock the audience at the end,” Rudetsky said. (In her review for The New York Times, Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote that it’s “as if Moira Rose from ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and Norma Desmond had spawned a villainess crooning a slowed-down ‘Toxic.’”)Simard gets only two songs from Spears’s catalog in “Once Upon a One More Time”: her campy entrance to “Work Bitch” and “Toxic,” an 11 o’clock number she twists into a seat-clenching wail she calls her “Robert Plant-Steven Tyler moment.”“The music is quite mercurial,” she said, “and we’ve come up with a homage that conveys what that section of the show needs. I do what I can to make it vocally exciting.”She flexed a similar shrieking melodic ability as Ernestina in “Hello, Dolly!” — hers is the earsplitting high C on that cast album’s “Put on Your Sunday Clothes.”Shortly after “Dolly!,” Tina Fey, who saw her in “Disaster!,” cast her as a replacement in “Mean Girls,” playing, among others, the teacher role that Fey played in the film.Then came the gender-swapped revival of “Company,” in which Simard played the fitness addict Sarah. Previews began in March 2020, but the industry shutdown delayed its opening until December 2021 and Covid outbreaks among the cast plagued its run.“Whew, I thought we’d all come back and there’d be a ribbon-cutting ceremony,” she joked, “but it seemed like we never really got out of the red alert of it all, and that’s a very intense place.”At one point, Patti LuPone, who played the cynical, hard-drinking Joanne, came down with Covid and, with 45 minutes notice, Simard was tapped to fill in for what would be 11 performances.“I didn’t see any of it, but I had tears rolling down my eyes because she sounded amazing,” Christopher Sieber, her scene partner in the production, recalled during a video call. “It’s Jennifer, so she’d prepared like crazy, but taking that — subbing for Patti LuPone and singing “The Ladies Who Lunch” — is a daunting task.”Being partnered with Sieber, her longtime friend, helped. The two played a couple struggling to adhere to their diets, and one bit had her doing tricep dips.“It’s an interesting scene because there are no jokes,” Sieber said. “It’s all behavioral, observational kind of humor, and Jennifer found the funny in things like that. She knows where a laugh should be, and breaks down every little thing, finding the trail that will get you to that moment.“She is a scientist,” he added. “There wasn’t a syllable we didn’t discuss.”LuPone would win that season’s best featured actress Tony, with Simard earning her second Tony nomination in that same category. But, Stepmother scene-stealing aside, Simard has her sights on another possible star turn. Shortly before being cast in “Once Upon a One More Time,” she and Sieber participated in an industry reading of “Death Becomes Her,” a musical adaptation of the 1992 film. She read the part played by Goldie Hawn.“You know when it’s a winner, and it’s a winner,” she said, hinting at a future life for the prospective show.Citing her “always correct” intuition, calling back to her now flourishing career, and unintentionally echoing her own comedic technique, she added: “You know, there’s no substitute for time.” More

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      ‘Once Upon a One More Time’ Review: Liberation Set to Britney Spears

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      The Britney Spears jukebox musical, about fairy tale princesses fighting for their emancipation, comes up short as a narrative of feminist awakening.The Britney Spears jukebox musical “Once Upon a One More Time” is not a bio-show recounting the singer’s life. Rather, it retrofits two dozen of her songs — including “Oops! … I Did It Again,” “Womanizer,” “Toxic,” “Gimme More” and, of course, “ … Baby One More Time” — to tell the story of a fair-haired princess who, realizing she has been played by a handsome rogue and controlled by an omnipresent father figure, rises up and fights for her emancipation.Hmm, maybe the (fully authorized) apple does not fall far from the tree.But this big, splashy show, which is quite entertaining at times, is hampered by a shambolic jumble of sisterhood 101 messaging and defanged fantasy revisionism. Rewriting classic yarns with a pop-feminist spin has become big business, with Disney updating its operating system one property at a time, and princesses and fairy tales calcifying into common tropes of empowerment pep on Broadway — think “Frozen,” “Aladdin,” “Bad Cinderella” or, for an artistically successful example, “Head Over Heels.”“Once Upon a One More Time” banks on a familiar figure, Cinderella (Briga Heelan), who here is starting to feel vaguely antsy about her life. She and her fellow storybook heroines — Snow White (Aisha Jackson), Princess Pea (Morgan Whitley), Rapunzel (Gabrielle Beckford), Sleeping Beauty (Ashley Chiu) and Little Mermaid (Lauren Zakrin) — are bossed around by an imperious Narrator (Adam Godley, for whom this must feel like a vacation after “The Lehman Trilogy”). He is basically a domineering stage manager acting on behalf of the patriarchy.Although Cinderella is supposed to be content in the happy-ever-after, her loneliness just might be killing her. But shush, pretty lady, push these thoughts out of your lovely head: As her prince (Justin Guarini) soothingly informs her, “You’re paid to be pretty, and I’m paid to be charming.”“What do you mean, paid?” Cinderella replies. “I don’t get paid.”So he tries to put her off the scent by singing “Make Me,” as one does.At Scroll Club, the princesses read their own stories: From left, Aisha Jackson as Snow White, Morgan Whitley as Princess Pea, Ashley Chiu as Sleeping Beauty, Gabrielle Beckford as Rapunzel and Lauren Zakrin as Ariel.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesLuckily, Cinderella gets a fortuitous visit from the Notorious O.F.G. (Original Fairy Godmother, played by Brooke Dillman), who gives her the key to understanding her existential malaise: Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.” (It’s a choice that will puzzle those who have moved on to more recent feminist waves; then again, Jon Hartmere’s book also includes a Howard Stern joke, so insert shrug emoji.)But before Cinderella has a chance to really dig in, the Stepmother (Jennifer Simard, last seen in “Company”) seizes the book. To retrieve it and ultimately become her own woman, our heroine enrolls her similarly shackled princess buddies from Scroll Club, where they read their own stories, for some consciousness raising.Much of the excitement here is generated by the choreography of Keone and Mari Madrid, who also directed the production (with an assist from David Leveaux, credited as the creative consultant). The couple, who created the Off Broadway hip-hop dance drama “Beyond Babel” in 2020, got their break in music videos, which may be why the large ensemble numbers shine brightest: tight formation extravaganzas that heavily rely on popping and locking, and incorporate elaborate hand movement. An occasional wink to Spears’s video oeuvre doesn’t hurt, either.And though the numbers for “ … Baby One More Time,” “Circus” and “Crazy” look fantastic, the one-size-fits-most staging can become repetitive, and is not as effective in those moments when a less in-your-face approach is needed.Adam Godley and Simard during a slowed-down “Toxic” number.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWorse, the songs often barely suit the story, even with some tweaked lyrics. Exceptions include Cinderella’s stepsisters (Ryann Redmond and Tess Soltau) commanding her to “Work Bitch.” The Max Martin jukebox musical “& Juliet,” which is playing a thousand feet away and features five Spears hits, integrates book and songs with less visible seams and more wit.Fully embracing arena-pop aesthetics (with flashy lighting by Kenneth Posner and scenic design by Anna Fleischle that relies on elements that can easily be dropped down or wheeled in and out), “Once Upon a One More Time” almost always falls back on supersizing. Half the numbers end with a subwoofer boom that will rattle your insides. And the jokes come in three flavors: broad, broader and annoying. A running gag, for example, has Snow White comically misspelling the simplest words, even though she is part of Scroll Club so one assumes that she can at least read.Two of the actors have embraced opposite ways of adjusting to this heightened reality. Simard delivers the single most original performance: She barely changes her expression, her face frozen in a heavily made-up mask of disdain, and her Stepmother feels as if Moira Rose from “Schitt’s Creek” and Norma Desmond had spawned a villainess crooning a slowed-down “Toxic.”Guarini banks on expansiveness as a prince generously sharing his charms, and displays a gift for slapstick, our critic writes.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesGuarini, on the other hand, banks on expansiveness as a prince generously sharing his charms with a bevy of women. He displays a gift for slapstick — watch the way he elastically climbs onto a platform two stairs at a time — and spares no effort, whether in solo songs or leading big numbers.It is actually surprising that his character has so many songs while most of the princesses are reduced to extras without distinctive personalities. (A gay couple even barges in during the “million princess march.”) Snow White rises above the fray, thanks to Jackson’s humor, vocal chops and high-energy charisma, and Whitley’s tart delivery helps sell Pea’s few lines, but Heelan’s Cinderella feels a little bland. Making matters worse, the sound localization is so bad that you can’t distinguish the women’s voices in their ensemble numbers. (The sound design is by Andrew Keister, costumes and hair by Loren Elstein.)Incongruously, Cin and Snow, as they like to call each other, share an intense duet, “Brightest Morning Star” (was “I’m a Slave 4 U” just too much?), but it’s a gratuitous throwaway with no follow-up. I guess nobody talks about what happens after Scroll Club.This timidity is but one example of the ways in which the show comes up short, both as a feminist text and as a tribute to Spears’s songbook — and, yes, her life. The last thing her fans might have expected from a Britney Spears musical is dutiful conventionality.Once Upon a One More TimeAt the Marquis Theater, Manhattan; onemoretimemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      A Britney Spears Jukebox Musical Hopes for #SeeBritney Energy

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      “Once Upon a One More Time” is bringing hits like “Toxic” and “Circus” to Broadway. Will Spears’s fiercely protective base embrace it?The book writer for “Once Upon a One More Time,” the Britney Spears jukebox musical opening on Broadway Thursday night, often returns to a memory from five years ago, when Spears sat in a Manhattan theater a few rows in front of him and watched an early reading of the show.“I was just watching her and it was like, ‘Is she going to like this?’” the writer, Jon Hartmere, said recently, recalling his relief whenever he saw Spears clap along or smile as one of her songs came on. “It was pure delight.”A campy fairy-tale spoof that sidesteps the bio-musical formula to focus on a cast of disillusioned Disney princesses and storybook protagonists, “Once Upon a One More Time” is the latest in a long line of jukebox musicals that have plumbed the catalogs of acts including Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner and the Temptations in pursuit of box office gold.The musical offers Spears-themed merchandise.Ye Fan for The New York TimesWith a track list stacked with hits such as “Stronger,” “Toxic” and “Circus,” the show has the potential for boffo success, but it also faces unique challenges. Originally conceived when Spears was under a conservatorship that gave her father vast control over her life, the production has assured fans that the show was fully authorized by the pop star herself after she was freed from the arrangement. But it is unclear how much her fiercely loyal fan base — whose activism helped fuel the unraveling of the conservatorship — will embrace it. It would likely only take one spirited comment from Spears, a 41-year-old star with a reputation for unfiltered and unpredictable social media posts, to win or lose that audience.Fans inside and outside the production have been keeping a close eye on Spears’s famously active Instagram account to see if she opines on the show (she hasn’t, yet). And cast and crew members have sought assurances internally that the production’s profits are benefiting Spears herself, rather than her former managers or her father, James P. Spears, who was named her conservator amid concerns about her mental health and went on to exercise control over her personal life and finances for more than a decade, even as she continued to perform.“As artists, we just want her to be able to make her own decisions and to live her life the way she hoped to,” said Keone Madrid, who directed and choreographed the show with his creative partner and wife, Mari Madrid. “We all yearn to honor her work.”Hunter Arnold, one of the show’s lead producers, said Spears signed the contract herself after the conservatorship was terminated and that no one else in Spears’s camp currently has a deal to receive profits.The outfit Taylor McKenzie wore to the musical was inspired by the one that Spears wore in the “Baby One More Time” video.Ye Fan for The New York TimesA representative for Spears did not make her available for an interview but confirmed the timing of the most recent deal and added that the singer had provided notes in response to videos of the Madrids’ choreography.The opening comes at a time when Spears’s life has continued to be the subject of gossip items. Since the legal arrangement was terminated, Spears has announced her marriage to Sam Asghari, something she had said she was not able to do under the conservatorship, and briefly returned to the music industry, releasing a track with Elton John. The legal battle over winding down the conservatorship has continued in Los Angeles, where her lawyers have lodged objections to some of the accounting during the conservatorship years.Within the production, the desire to please Spears has sometimes meant seizing on the dribs and drabs of information that they get from representatives of a reclusive megastar.Britney likes fairy tales? The show is based in a world where Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel are friends. Britney loves butterflies? The production made props of the insects and made the show’s branding into what looks like butterfly-shaped rainbow floodlights, which theatergoers can pose with outside the theater. (“That might be an example of where we had tried to lean in too hard,” Hartmere said of the show’s monthlong tryout in Washington, D.C., noting that the show had gotten rid of a “butterfly vortex” for the Broadway production.)”Once Upon a One More Time” invites fans to pose for shareable pictures. “The spirit of it has always been serving her desires,” Arnold said.Because of revelations around how Spears’s father and former management company benefited financially from the conservatorship, the musical’s financial structure has been a central point of scrutiny for some fans.Initially, production papers from late 2019 listed a company called Shiloh Standing, Inc., which was started by Spears’s father shortly after the creation of the conservatorship, as being entitled to 7.5 percent of the production’s net profits, according to documents filed with New York State’s attorney general’s office. Larry Rudolph, Spears’s former manager, was also slated to receive funds, including a $30,000 executive producer fee, plus $1,500 per week.The show’s creators have tried to cater to the wishes of Spears and her fandom.Ye Fan for The New York TimesBut plans for a short run in Chicago in 2020, followed by a Broadway transfer, were scuttled by the pandemic, the show was put on hold and, in that time, Spears’s world was transformed. Leslie Papa, a spokeswoman for the show, said that Spears’s contract was negotiated and signed in 2022, after the termination of the conservatorship, and provides all compensation directly to her.Arnold said Spears has a stake in the show’s royalties through music licensing proceeds, in addition to an underlying rights deal, which he said was carved out in recognition of her role in popularizing the music, even if other lyricists and music producers own much of the rights to the songs. He declined to specify the exact payment structure for Spears, and it is not included in government filings thus far.According to a copy of a 2022 budget for the Broadway musical that was shared with The New York Times by someone who was not authorized to discuss the production, the advance payment for the underlying rights deal associated with the show was $80,000. Arnold noted that with successful Broadway shows, royalties often quickly outpace initial advances.Several high school seniors from Pennsylvania came to see the show. Ye Fan for The New York TimesSo far some of the biggest social media accounts associated with the movement to end the conservatorship, known as #FreeBritney, have said little about the musical, especially in contrast to the fan excitement around the Elton John collaboration.But many of the ticket holders at previews at the Marquis Theater are quick to label themselves as devoted Britney fans, and they react with delight at the show’s many knowing references to the pop star, which include a snippet of the original choreography from “Oops! … I Did It Again” that tends to make the audience erupt. Because they spent their early teenage years internalizing Spears’s dancing on MTV, the Madrids, who are known for their narrative choreography and staccato isolations, consider themselves “natural extensions of her and her work.”“Her music has always been around in my life in one way or another,” Mari Madrid said.Those references are like a running inside joke that most of the audience seems to understand. The crowd doesn’t hear the word “Britney” through the entire show — it’s only at the end that the speakers blast the pop star’s most famous opening line: “It’s Britney, bitch.” None of the show’s official merchandise carries Spears’s image, but one fast-selling tote bag proclaims, “It’s Broadway, bitch.”Stoyanka Damyanova, who is visiting from Bulgaria, was there seeing the musical for the third time.Ye Fan for The New York TimesNelson Saavedra Jr., the owner of the #FreeBritney page on Reddit, has opted to support the show and has attended two preview performances already, noting that any direct assessment from Spears would influence his own thinking on it.“Britney signed the deal after she was free so let’s just move on and take that at face value,” Saavedra said. “Of course, that would change tomorrow if she said, ‘Please don’t go see this play.’”Audience members can be forgiven for thinking that the musical’s central theme — a cohort of famed damsels in distress taking control of their own lives — is some grand metaphor for Spears’s release from the conservatorship, but Hartmere said the parallels are just coincidence.“It’s this story about women learning what they can and should have out of life,” Hartmere said. “That’s always been the story from the get-go.”For Hartmere, returning to that memory of Spears watching that early performance also engenders some anxiety: What if she ends up disappointed that some songs did not make the final cut? The show’s creators could not figure out how to make the risqué lyrics from her 2016 track “Clumsy” fit for children, so the song was removed.Right now, the creators can only wait to see if Spears decides to attend a performance — which, they acknowledge, is anyone’s best guess.Michael Paulson and Liz Day contributed reporting. More

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      Doing It Again: Spears Songs and Fairy Tale Characters, Now for Broadway

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      “Once Upon a One More Time” plans to open on Broadway next summer.“Once Upon a One More Time,” a new musical combining songs popularized by Britney Spears with a revisionist take on classic fairy tales, plans to open on Broadway next summer.If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because some of its elements echo those of other Broadway shows: The new musical “& Juliet” is a revisionist take on Shakespeare that includes several songs popularized by Spears (“Oops! … I Did It Again” is featured in both shows); the musical “Into the Woods” posits new ways of seeing fairy tale characters (including Cinderella, who is in both shows); and giving new agency to famous female figures is at the heart of “Wicked,” “Six” and the upcoming “Bad Cinderella” (which, obviously, also features the slippery-slippered young woman).“Once Upon a One More Time” imagines a sort of book club of fairy tale women who read “The Feminine Mystique” (yes, the Betty Friedan feminist classic) and are inspired to rethink their happily-ever-afters.The show has been in development for years, backed by James L. Nederlander, the president of the Nederlander Organization, which owns or operates nine Broadway theaters. The show has had its share of turnover and tumult — several different directors have been attached over time, an announced out-of-town production in Chicago was delayed and then canceled, and a production last winter at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington was greeted by sold-out-audiences but unimpressed critics.Now, the show is ready for its next chapter.The producers of “Once Upon a One More Time” said Friday that the show will begin performances May 13 and open June 22 at the Nederlanders’ Marquis Theater. Those dates mean that the show will be part of the next theater season — not this one. (Summer openings are unusual but not unheard-of on Broadway: A musical adaptation of “Back to the Future” is also planning to open next summer.)“Once Upon a One More Time” is being directed by Keone and Mari Madrid, a married hip-hop dance team making their Broadway debuts, assisted by the British director David Leveaux, a five-time Tony nominee who is credited as a creative consultant. The show features a book by Jon Hartmere, who previously wrote the screenplay for “The Upside” and was one of the writers of the Off Broadway musical “Bare.”The musical is being produced by Nederlander and Hunter Arnold; it is being capitalized for $20 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Spears’s fan club is being given first access to tickets. More

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      In Washington, a Princess Party and a Carnival of Self-Loathing

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      Two shows with Broadway aspirations, “Once Upon a One More Time” and “A Strange Loop,” represent opposite extremes of what a big, mainstream production can be.WASHINGTON — Sidney Harman Hall was bustling before a recent matinee of “Once Upon a One More Time,” a revisionist fairy tale mash-up scored with Britney Spears songs at Shakespeare Theater Company here. People were taking group selfies at one of two step-and-repeats. A few girls — and women — tittered in tiaras. Purple T-shirts and tote bags with the show’s title and the names of storybook princesses were being sold. And the theater, which has a capacity of about 700, had no empty seats in sight. At least from the outside, “Once Upon a One More Time” looked like the kind of splashy show you might find on Broadway.I was in Washington for the weekend, at the first post-opening matinee of the show, and it wasn’t the only musical in the neighborhood with Broadway aspirations; the second show I saw here, Woolly Mammoth’s production of “A Strange Loop,” by Michael R. Jackson, has just announced plans for a Broadway run in the spring. It’s a more daring work: a meta show about a queer Black playwright writing a show about a queer Black playwright that opened Off Broadway in 2019 and won the Pulitzer Prize.Two very different shows in two very different theaters less than a mile apart: “Once Upon a One More Time” and “A Strange Loop” represent opposite extremes of what a Broadway production can be.Written by Jon Hartmere and directed and choreographed by the husband-and-wife team Keone and Mari Madrid, “Once Upon a One More Time” is set inside an abstract representation of the world of children’s storybooks. That’s to say that whenever a child opens a book of fairy tales, the denizens of this magical kingdom must act out the classic plots for the reader. Meanwhile, the princes and princesses — Snow White (Aisha Jackson), the Little Mermaid (Lauren Zakrin), Sleeping Beauty (Ashley Chiu), the Princess and the Pea (Morgan Weed), Rapunzel (Wonu Ogunfowora) and several others — hang around like on-call workers, waiting for their boss, the Narrator, to direct them through the scenes of their tales, which they must obediently act out in order to have their happily ever after.Princesses take a stand: From left, Lauren Zakrin, Selene Haro, Ashley Chiu, Adrianna Weir (seated), Wonu Ogunfowora, Aisha Jackson, Jennifer Florentino and Amy Hillner Larsen.Mathew MurphyBut Cinderella (Briga Heelan) isn’t happy, and becomes even less so after she learns that her Prince Charming (Justin Guarini) is being paid for his services while she isn’t. Then Cinderella meets the Notorious O.F.G. (that’s Original Fairy Godmother, comically played by Brooke Dillman), who comes all the way from the mystical land of Flatbush, Brooklyn, to give poor Cin a copy of “The Feminine Mystique.” Suddenly enlightened by feminist theory, Cinderella leads her fellow princesses in protest, demanding that they be allowed to write their own stories.The audience cheered at the more clever pairings of popular Spears songs with important plot points, like an unfaithful prince singing “Oops! … I Did It Again” or Cinderella’s evil stepmother singing “Toxic.”But as I watched the show, I wondered: Who is the target audience for this? So many Broadway shows are aimed at a general audience, and similarly, “Once Upon a One More Time” seems to want to appeal to both children and adults. The fairy tale premise (nodding to shows like “Into the Woods” and “Shrek”) and the earnest sermonizing seem to point to an audience of kids. But the lines of dialogue about microaggressions (the Narrator warns Cinderella about being “difficult,” getting “hysterical” and using a “shrill” voice, all of which made the audience gasp), along with some mild sex jokes, are clearly aimed at knowing adults. Plus, call me conventional, but I doubt a children’s show would include a song called “Work Bitch.” In aiming for a Broadway stage, “Once Upon a One More Time” still seems to be figuring out what its prospective audience would look like.With its blatant messaging about female empowerment and revisionist approach, not unlike two recent Broadway musicals — “Six” and “Diana,” both of which recast famous women from history as self-possessed and self-reliant feminist icons — “Once Upon a One More Time” reflects the broad strokes of modern-day feminism but shies away from anything too hefty or complex. That includes the pink-pigtailed elephant in the room: Spears herself, who has documented what she has called years of exploitation in her quest to end her conservatorship. So particularly the Britney faithful will most likely be disappointed to find the pop star absent from a show largely based on the products of her career.“A Strange Loop” has announced plans to transfer to Broadway in the spring. From left: James Jackson Jr., L Morgan Lee, Antwayn Hopper, John-Andrew Morrison, Jaquel Spivey (seated right), Jason Veasey and John-Michael Lyles.Marc J. FranklinAt Woolly Mammoth’s space, just a few blocks from Sidney Harman Hall, there were no selfie stations or gift kiosks. The theater seats less than 300 people, and the content of Jackson’s “A Strange Loop” could not be more different from “Once Upon a One More Time.”Directed by Stephen Brackett, “A Strange Loop” is a carnival of its protagonist’s self-loathing, his insecurities, his introspective reveries on sexuality and identity, society, family and religion. It’s hilarious until it turns vicious, and vice versa. And it defines itself through a critique of commercial productions, like the long-running Broadway show “The Lion King,” as well as through a deconstruction of the expectations society may have of a Black, queer artist, which can crush brave new work.The musical rejects the polite, family-friendly themes and the tidy endings of what its protagonist, a Broadway usher named Usher (Jaquel Spivey), sees at work. Full of references to sexual assault and racism, and with enough offensive language to fill a gallon-size swear jar, “A Strange Loop” aims to bring taboo topics to mainstream theater. The Woolly Mammoth crowd snapped and mmhmm-ed to lines breaking down queer and race politics; at one point a man in the row behind me got out of his seat and waved his arms around to the music as if he were at a rave — if raves played devastating songs about homophobia and abuse.Walking out of the theater afterward, I overheard a group of friends wonder if “A Strange Loop” could go to Broadway. One woman had reservations; she liked it, she said, but — and here she paused before awkwardly stumbling through her qualifier — it was a musical about AIDS.I held my tongue — because I could’ve mentioned that “Rent” and “Angels in America” were two Broadway shows about AIDS. Or that “A Strange Loop” is about so much more than AIDS. Or that this season, Broadway had “Dana H.,” a show about kidnapping and assault, and “Is This a Room,” about a real F.B.I. investigation — both fantastic, critically acclaimed works of art. Or that “Slave Play” brought similarly explicit language and sexual content to Broadway in 2019 and has now reopened.Or I could’ve simply said that this beautifully brutal work of theater is already headed to Broadway. More