Andrew Lloyd Webber has today announced that Cinderella - his new musical with Emerald Fennell - will not partake in the government pilot scheme and will, therefore, open in accordance with covid restrictions at the end of June. It's been a long time coming. Last year Carrie Hope Fletcher told Grazia all about her prep for the lead role...
2021 was not exactly a fairy tale. The global pandemic drove us inside and transformed the way we live and work, changing our relationships, our health and our hobbies. The journey out of lockdown is still in progress, but many industries are beginning to look ahead, at how they can survive and thrive. One of those industries – dismissed by some as far from vital but undoubtedly important for the soul of this country – is the theatre, and while many performance spaces are yet to open, plans are afoot. And Andrew Lloyd Webber is, naturally, leading the charge on waving a magic wand over the musical scene.
This month sees the first West End premiere since the pandemic: Cinderella. It was teased last year with the release of its score, starting with single Bad Cinderella, the first song we heard from the legendary musical composer’s next offering. Based on a new idea from Emerald Fennell – who plays Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown and won an Oscar for Promising Young Woman - it seeks to reappraise the slightly wet fairy tale heroine. This new incarnation sees Carrie Hope Fletcher – celebrated for playing Veronica in Heathers: The Musical as well as a long list of roles in Les Miserables, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Addams Family Musical – put a modern spin on Cinders and present a modern, forthright young woman.
It felt right from the beginning, when she was called in to record some demos and workshop the show while it was in its early stages – common practice in the theatre. ‘When I walked into the room and met Andrew Lloyd Webber, he said 'so, this is not the Cinderella that you would usually expect"', Carrie recalls to Grazia. ‘She’s not very graceful. When he told me that she wore black dresses and big chunky boots, I was standing there wearing a black dress and my Doc Martens.’
Cinderella was supposed to launch last year. Naturally, that was delayed, prompting the team to go ahead with the release of some of the music. It was the perfect way to ensure a hardcore fanbase ahead of its new June 2021 launch date.
‘I always think with new musicals, buying tickets is always a gamble’, Carrie explains. ‘You’ve never heard it before. You've never seen it. You don't know anything about it. So people often go “oh, I'll just go back and see a long runner again, something that I've seen before, that I know I love. So I feel like releasing the album before the show comes out means that people are going to hear it and go, "oh, this sounds like it's for me."’ She cites Wicked and Hamilton, which had an enormous UK following before their West End arrivals thanks to the Broadway recordings. And, indeed, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar was a huge hit as a concept album before it found its way to the stage.
Bad Cinderella was the natural choice for the first single ahead of the album’s release. ‘This is the first time that Cinderella actually sings in the show’, says Carrie. ‘It's your first introduction to her as a person, and her character. And all the lyrics really do sum up who she is as a character, and why she isn't the Cinderella that we're used to. It’s kind of the perfect song to encapsulate her and who she is.’
Carrie is itching to get the show on the stage – it will debut at the Gillian Lynne Theatre – after months away from the West End. A successful novelist, she has spent much of lockdown focusing on her writing. But the call of performing is always there.
‘I've really, really missed theatre’, she says. ‘I've missed it more than I could possibly explain. It's really strange: for the last few years, going in every day, seeing the same faces and being in that environment, being backstage doing a show every night, eight shows a week, and then all of a sudden, just to stop: it was very strange.’
Like many of us, she longs for the country’s arts scene to return to form. It’s more important than ever. ‘Not only have we been missing them over the last few months, but we all need that bit of escapism,’ she says. ‘We will need to go and not be in this weird reality that is filled with this virus, and all of the other politics that's going on in the world in America and here: we need to go and sit in Oz for a bit. And not be here. And I think the art provides that.’
Fingers crossed, 2021 – and the return of this revamped fairytale princess – will give us a happy ever after after all.
Bad Cinderella is out now. Cinderella opens at the Gillian Lynne Theatre on June 25th.
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