At The Ball

When I booked the tickets for Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella I was vaguely hoping for something a bit special. After all, this was, pound for pound, the greatest team of writers for the musical stage of the twentieth century and there's always something going on that little bit, and often a whole lot, beyond the ordinary in their shows. Unfortunately, as I discovered yesterday afternoon, Cinderella is the exception.

It's not a terrible show. The girls and Noi and myself had a passably enjoyable afternoon. But it was all very ordinary. The performances were good (well with Lea Salonga in the title role you're not likely to be watching amateurs), the costumes fine, the orchestra first rate, the sets pretty (but for the price of the tickets I would have thought we might have got something that looked expensive. With the exception of a single interior, it didn't.) But the show itself didn't seem to know what it wanted to be. It felt like panto, but lacked the energy. There were (long) stretches of romance & yearning, but it wasn't in any real sense trying to be romantic. Actually it felt lazy.

Most disappointing of all, and I never thought I'd find myself saying this - as far as I could tell Richard Rogers's score had nothing outstanding about it. Most of the songs felt like generic syrupy late-fifties ballads. Whenever the music came in, the oumph went out. It was all so ordinary. I just kept wishing I was at Carousel again.