Bad Cinderella on Broadway

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Emerald Fennell give a classic story a modern makeover in Bad Cinderella. Get Bad Cinderella tickets on TodayTix and step into a fierce fairytale.

This isn’t your (step)mother’s Cinderella. Bad Cinderella has all the hallmarks of the time-honored princess story: the makeover 'till midnight, the royal ball, the glass slippers, a Prince Charming, and dreamlike tunes, by living legend Webber. But Oscar-winning writer Fennell adds a timely message for today, about how what’s on the inside truly counts.

Enter the beautiful Belleville, a town where everyone and everything looks perfect. Well, almost. This story’s “grunge-punk” Cinderella is rebellious, but her strong-minded spirit makes her “a new kind of princess, one that little girls and big girls alike could all use,” raves London Theatre. Get ready to be spellbound by this fairytale twist, which showcases gorgeous designs and royal performances that rule.

Have a ball at Bad Cinderella on Broadway. Get tickets to Bad Cinderella in New York on TodayTix now.

In the Bad Cinderella musical, our heroine is an outcast by choice, unlike in the original fairy tale. She changes her tune upon realizing she has feelings for her best friend, Prince Sebastian: believing he won’t love her as she is, Cinderella gets a temporary makeover from a local Godmother (read: plastic surgeon). But what will happen when the beauty fades?

Bad Cinderella premiered in London's West End in 2021, running there for just over a year. The show received multiple nods at London’s Olivier and WhatsOnStage Awards, and Webber and lyricist David Zippel’s score got a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theater Album.

That nod was Webber’s 15th Grammy nomination to date; he’s won the award four times (including a Grammy Legend special award), and also has one Oscar, one Emmy, and seven Tonys, putting him in the select group to achieve EGOT status. His most famous works include Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Sunset Boulevard, and Jesus Christ Superstar, among others.

Behind the original story for Bad Cinderella is Emerald Fennell, the Oscar-winning writer of the 2020 film Promising Young Woman. A multi-hyphenate, she also directed that film, was the showrunner for season 2 of Killing Eve, and has acted on shows including The Crown. Critically acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Alexis Scheer (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin) provides additional material for the script.

What to Watch For

• Webber's musical was simply titled Cinderella when it premiered in London. Like Cinderella herself, the title got a makeover!
• The Cinderella story is popular with musical theatre writers. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote a Cinderella musical in 1957, and Cinderella is a main character in Sondheim's fairytale mashup musical Into the Woods.
• A show about beauty needs eye-catching costumes. An ArtsDesk review of the London production describes the aesthetic as "Elsa Schiaparelli meets Jean Paul Gaultier in pre-revolutionary France," with the women's costumes displaying a "torrent of taffeta" and the men's, "muscle-enhancing minimalism."
• The London cast of Bad Cinderella were inspired by performing icons. Rebecca Trehearn channeled Miranda Richardson and Jane Krakowski to perform the role of the Queen, and Caleb Roberts thought of attention-grabbing public figures, like Michael Jackson and even Barack Obama, while playing Prince Charming.
• In London, some seating sections in the Gillian Lynne Theatre (where Bad Cinderella performed) actually moved around during the production.