Shakespeare and Company’s Cindy Bella (or The Glass Slipper)

David Begelman

Word has it that Irina Brook, who directed and with Anna Brownsted coauthored Shakespeare and Company’s musical updating of the Cinderella tale, drew her inspiration from Rossini’s opera, La Cenerentola. Well, not completely. Cindy Bella (or The Glass Slipper) is such a pastiche of borrowed musical stuff from so many sources, it’s fair to say Ms. Brook favors a cut and paste approach with considerably more than Rossini to paste.

Unveiled as a work in progress last September, Ms. Brook’s hurried vehicle slaps together not only memorable arias, including one by Puccini (her downtrodden heroine Cindy Bella is heard singing O mio babbino caro from Gianni Schicchi on the accordion no less than five times). Her step-father, in a distraught mood, delivers a near complete rendition of Verdi’s Ế sogno o realtá? from his stirring opera Falstaff.  

Ms. Brook’s modernized Cinderella or Cindy Bella goes by the name of “Angelina,” so that the director has the opportunity to celebrate such latter day musical enthusiasms as the Louis Prima spin on a waitress of the same name, who works not at La Scala, but “at the pizzeria.”

Another character, Dandini (played by David Joseph), who disguises himself as Prince Charming (actually, the latter is called Ramiro for reasons too obvious to mention), contributes his own rendition of the Pavarotti hit, O sole mio.

 I think it’s fair to say that Ms. Brook is enraptured more with things Italian than merely Rossini, even though strains of his finale to the William Tell Overture (a.k.a. the thundering hoof beats of the Lone Ranger) are also plugged into her assortment of musical numbers.

Other disparate touches are thrown into the mix and come at you like curve balls. The fairy godmother, Alidora (played by Renée Margaret Speltz), appears in a white outfit indisputably Indian in style (although she enters speaking Italian), and the last musical number of the show bears an eerie resemblance to a Bollywood dance fest from Mumbai, as in Slumdog Millionaire.

Cindy Bella (played disarmingly by Heather Fisch) is condemned to drudgery in the home of her step-father, Don Magnifico (played by Benjamin Luxon with an accent too British for a presumably Italian paterfamilias). Mr. Luxon’s baritone is a dead giveaway of his operatic training.

Don Magnifico’s spoiled and nasty daughters, Clorinda and Tisbe (played by Dana Harrison and Caley Milliken in overdrive), whether recovering from a previous night’s hangover, or throwing tantrums about the set, have both set their sights on attending a ball to snatch up Prince Ramiro, played by Scott Renzoni. In order to keep his identity secret, the prince drifts onto the stage in beret and glasses. He falls for Angelina despite her lowly domestic station, and even before she dons her dazzling ball attire. Her only accessory during their first encounter is her accordion, and it must be her rendition of the Puccini aria that clinches it for the smitten Ramiro.

As in the original Cinderella tale, Angelina attends the ball decked out gorgeously, only in an improbable black top hat and white veil. Nonetheless, Ramiro’s ardor is in no way lessened because of her unusual attire.

At the stroke of midnight, Angelina flees the ball, just as her fairy godmother, Alidora, has instructed her. In Ms. Brook’s version, Angelina purposely leaves a shoe (transformed from a sneaker in previous performances) for Ramiro to trace, rather than accidentally losing it while rushing from the palace. The ending of the musical follows the usual plot line, with lovers united, sisters and step-father flummoxed and then contrite, Angelina forgiving, and everyone living—well, you know the drill.

Cindy Bella (or The Glass Slipper) has a problem with a dizzying array of newer material that is grafted onto the popular fairy tale. A bewildering mix of classical, operatic, and modern musical numbers follow one another as though they were mustered from a concert lost in a time warp. For example, Don Magnifico and his two daughters dance and sing to “Putting On the Ritz,” in a comedic routine we thought was put to rest in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein.  

Much of the dialogue is on the corny side. Don Magnifico bellows to his off stage daughters to “Get your bloomin’ asses down here!” (a like-minded sentiment reminiscent of Eliza Doolittle’s howl at the racetrack in My Fair Lady); a character muses, “You make my jingle bells jingle;” while sophomoric jokes pepper the script, like: “What do you call cheese that’s not yours? Nacho cheese!”

There’s much descent into the aisles by characters at several points in the musical, and a good deal of updated contrivance is on the silly side, as when Prince Ramiro calls his aide “Percy” on a cell phone to catch Angelina running from the ball, or when the evil sisters beg the old man for a credit card on their shopping spree.

Maybe Ms. Brooks’ show could be a hit with a child or high school audience. For theatergoers with an appetite for something more substantial, it’s just a lot of fooling around with much of the action bereft of redeeming qualities. In short, a piffle.         

The premiere of Cindy Bella (or The Glass Slipper) opened on December 10 for a limited 11-show run through December 20, 2009, at the Founders’ Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Massachusetts. Seating by general admission. Tickets are $34 and can be purchased by calling the box office at 413.637.3353 or online at www.shakespeare.org.