‘Bad Cinderella’ stops on Broadway and ends Lloyd Webber’s Streak

“Bad Cinderella,” a revisionist riff on the classic fairy tale, will end on June 4, ending, at least for now, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 43-year run of shows on Broadway.

The latest musical, which premiered March 23, wasn’t the pinnacle of that career — it was greeted on Broadway by hostile reviews, received zero Tony nominations and struggled at the box office. Last week, it played to homes that were only 54 percent full and grossed just $326,303, making it the lowest-grossing musical on Broadway.

It had done slightly better in London, and not just because “bad” wasn’t part of the title there – critics had rated it more favorably when it opened in the West End after multiple pandemic-related delays, but it had only a modest run and a closure, by the way, cloudy the cast was informed And some of the words Lloyd Webber always described the course of events.

The musical, like most Cinderella stories, is about a shabbily treated young woman whose fortunes change when she meets a prince. The twists in this production are that the protagonist is rebellious, Prince Charming is gay and beauty standards are oppressive.

In addition to music by Lloyd Webber, who is best known as the hugely successful composer of hit musicals like “Cats,” “Evita,” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” the musical features a book created by Emerald Fennell (the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Promising Young Woman”), then adapted by the playwright Alexis Scheer (“Our Dear Dead Drug Lord”), and lyrics by David Zippel (who won a Tony years ago for writing the lyrics to “City of Angels”). “Bad Cinderella” is directed by Laurence Connor, who previously had more success directing Lloyd Webber’s 2015 musical “School of Rock.”

“Bad Cinderella” was capitalized for up to $19 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recovered. The lead producer of the musical is Christine Schwarzman, a lawyer; together, she and her husband, the Blackstone billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, are major players in New York financial and philanthropic circles. Christine Schwarzman, through her production company, No guarantees; she is also a main producer of ‘Fat Ham’ which won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and is nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play.

At the time of closing, “Bad Cinderella” will have played 33 preview performances and 85 regular performances.