Hex is cursed. This musical adaptation of Sleeping Beauty played only a handful of its planned performances last December due to Covid surges, and finally arrives at its official opening, a whole year later, as a sporadically charming but utterly confused mess.
The first half of Tanya Ronder’s book seems desperate to sanitise the underlying horror and unfairness of fairytales, while the second pitches us into visions of flesh-eating infanticide. Jim Fortune’s score occasionally rises to Sondheim-ish levels of intricate cleverness, but the scenery is more hummable.
