Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella is to close on Broadway just over 10 weeks after its official opening night. The show, which did not receive any nominations at this year’s Tony awards, has announced that “the ball must come to an end” and that it will bow out at New York’s Imperial theatre on 4 June. Ticket sales have dipped despite a low average price for a big Broadway musical ($54 for last week). It will have played 33 previews and 85 performances.
The musical is a retooled version of Cinderella, which ran for just under a year (including a Covid-related break in performances) and suffered heavy losses at London’s Gillian Lynne theatre. Lloyd Webber was criticised for the manner in which some current and future Cinderella cast members learned of its closure in 2022 via social media and for his suggestion, in a letter read out at its final night, that opening a new musical during the pandemic “might have been a costly mistake”. (He later issued a statement saying his words had been misunderstood and that he was proud of the show.)
While Cinderella received many favourable reviews in London, its US counterpart – with a new cast led by Linedy Genao and some new songs – did not fare as well with critics. The Guardian’s Lauren Mechling called it “cheerful, a little cheeky, and not a little chaotic” while Variety’s Naveen Kumar wrote that Bad Cinderella was “not good” and deemed it “muddled and momentum-less”. The musical has a book by Emerald Fennell, lyrics by David Zippel and music by Lloyd Webber, who missed the opening night on Broadway when his eldest son was hospitalised with gastric cancer. Nicholas Lloyd Webber, also a composer, died in March.
Last month, Lloyd Webber’s monster hit The Phantom of the Opera closed in New York after a record-breaking 35 years. When Bad Cinderella ends next month, it will be the first time that the composer has not had a show running on Broadway since Evita opened in 1979.
