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Could This Slipper Fit Mickey?
Wry for adults, sweet for kids, this 'Cinderella' seems
inspired by Disney.
By DARYL H. MILLER, Times Staff Writer
In readying its new touring version of Rodgers and
Hammerstein's "Cinderella," the Networks producing organization
appears to have ripped several pages from the Disney playbook.
For starters, the show incorporates animal sidekicks like
those in the classic animated movie, which are depicted by
puppets that look to have been inspired by the Disney stage
production of "The Lion King."
Other visuals seem to have been copied from the stage
versions of both "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King." A
still more obvious reference is the 1997 "Wonderful World of
Disney" TV movie, from which this production borrows its pop
inflections, story structure and even one of its stars (Paolo
Montalban as the Prince).
To this mixture has been added a wry, knowing attitude
toward the story's conventions, as when the herald, upon
discovering Cinderella's slipper, comments: "Who dances in glass
shoes? Ouch." The casting, too, is slyly deconstructionist, with
the ageless and sexy Eartha Kitt playing the Fairy Godmother and
Everett Quinton, a key player in the arty drag of Charles Ludlam
and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, portraying the
Stepmother.
The resulting show, adapted by Tom Briggs, operates on two
levels, with sweetness, cuteness and broad humor for the kids
and inside jokes for the adults. The layers coexist fairly
harmoniously, though they occasionally strain at the seams.
Nevertheless, the production seemed to work magic on Tuesday's
opening-night audience at the Orange County Performing Arts
Center, where the production plays through Sunday.
It's easy to see how dirt-smudged Cinderella cleans up so
divinely when she's got Kitt's Godmother as a role model.
Stunning in a sequined gown that's slit all the way up the leg,
Kitt uses that deep, champagne-soaked voice of hers to delicious
effect as she psychoanalyzes the stepmother's treatment of
Cinderella by saying: "You know what her problem is? She can't
handle how fabulous you are."
The Cinderella in question is played by Jamie-Lynn Sigler,
who goes from playing a mob princess as Tony's daughter on the
HBO series "The Sopranos" to fairy-tale princess here. Sigler
sings in a sweet, smooth-as-glass pop soprano and is so
radiantly demure, winsome and unaffected that Montalban's teen-
heartthrob Prince couldn't resist her if he tried.
Comically supplying the story's nastiness factor, Quinton
bites into the stepmother's lines in a voice almost as deep as
Kitt's and looks fabulous, in his own way, with his muscular
arms and shoulders exposed by his gowns.
Composer Andrew Lippa (of the Manhattan Theatre Club
version of "The Wild Party," working here with his director on
that show, Gabriel Barre) adds fairly unobtrusive pop accents to
his arrangements of the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein songs.
The obscure R&H tune "There's Music in You" that has been slip-
stitched onto the end of the show, however, seems both out of
place and unnecessary.
The animal puppets--four white mice, a house cat and a
dove, operated by black-clad puppeteers--are a hit with kids and
adults alike, and in another page from Disney, take-home
reproductions of the mice are sold at the concession stand.
* * *
* "Cinderella," Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600
Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tonight-Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday,
2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Ends Sunday. $22-$57.
(714) 740-7878 or (213) 365-3500.
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