The pop princess has led an extraordinary life with some huge highs and notorious lows. Some of it seems pretty unbelievable and yet it is not the subject of the show. The storyline has been revealed and it is even more bonkers than anyone could have imagined. The musical will use 23 of Britney’s biggest hits and is expected to debut later this year.
Jon Hartmere has created the book (a musical’s story and script) and just revealed the idea for Once Upon a One More Time. The clue is in the fairytale them of the title.
Hartmere said: “Cinderella is having an existential crisis, and she has a posse of famous princesses, and her stepmother is the main antagonist, and there’s also Prince Charming and a dwarf we’ve never met — the eighth dwarf — and a narrator who is unhappy his system is being dismantled before his eyes.
“These women have been in this hermetically sealed world, and then they start to get deeper into modern ideas — second and third-wave feminism — and also explore how stories are passed down to us, and where we get our norms from. But it’s also superfun and funny.”
Sorry? Hit Me One More Time with that, please. It’s a lot to take in, and there’s more.
Apparently, Cinders starts a book club with Snow White, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty but they only have one book – Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
Until, that is, a fairy godmother brings them Betty Friedan’s 1963 feminist classic, The Feminine Mystique, and the princesses are never the same again.
The same might go for audiences. This sounds either like it will be a bizarrely bonkers triumph or a shocking disaster.
The New York Times reported that preliminary readings of the script have begun and Britney herself has been along to listen.
The show is scheduled to start previews on October 29, with the official opening night on November 13, at the James M Nederlander Theater in Chicago.
UK fans may have to wait a little longer to get their first taste of the fun. Of course, if the fairytale turns into a nightmare during the trial run, it may never make it to Broadway at all.
