Hey, Remember When Emerald Fennell Wrote a Cinderella Musical With Andrew Lloyd Webber?

Emerald Fennell is having her moment. “Wuthering Heights” is the number one film in America, with over $167 million in the bank worldwide. Yes, the discourse has been heated but this is also an uncommon instance of a woman-directed film getting a decent-sized budget and major release, and then inspiring intense conversations on- and offline. It wasn’t that long ago that, if a movie from a female filmmaker did poorly, critically or commercially, we would be subjected to tedious bad-faith headlines over whether or not this was bad for the entire gender. So, even though I personally think the movie is dumb as all hell, I’ll take this as a win.

Fennell is a star director now, but she’s also done pretty much everything. As an actress, you may have seen her playing Camilla Parker-Bowles in The Crown or Nurse Patsy in Call the Midwife. She’s published books for children and adults, took over from her friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the head writer of Killing Eve in its second season. And she was Midge in Barbie! But if we want to talk about some full-on Emerald Fennell mad-libs, we have to go with a career moment she’d probably rather we forget: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella.

Picture the scene. It’s 2020. COVID is ravaging the nation. Everything is closed. And Andrew Lloyd Webber needs another hit. Despite creating some of the biggest musicals of all time, his post-Phantom of the Opera run has been noticeably spotty. The ’90s was an endless cycle of flops. His Phantom sequel, Love Never Dies, is a grand old disaster (one I cherish.) And he’s largely known for judging reality TV shows, including the one that gave us Jessie Buckley. But he has finally got a true commercial hit on his hand with School of Rock, adapted from the Jack Black movie. Now, ALW wants something that will appeal to the same demographic of young musical lovers who film the encore for TikTok and cosplay the characters. He wants something hip, funky fresh, and devoid of accidental CGI buttholes. & Juliet, a jukebox musical adding a modern light feminist flair to Shakespeare is a huge hit. So, why not adapt another public domain tale?

Fennell was invited to write the book for Cinderella, a snazzy subversion of fairy-tales that would also serve as a star vehicle for Carrie Hope Fletcher, a major star on the British musical scene. ALW was so eager to make the show a hit that he began pushing for it, and other West End shows, to get back into theatres as Britain struggled with COVID. He claimed he would happily be arrested in the name of keeping live theatre alive. But a literal pandemic kept kicking the show in the teeth, and it opened in August 2021 after some delays.

To the surprise of many, the reviews were pretty great, certainly some of Lord Andy’s strongest in quite a while. Fennell’s book was applauded for its heart and humour, the songs were catchy, and Fletcher got a few raves. Even some American critics liked it, albeit with a few extra caveats. Speaking for myself, having delved into a slime tutorial or two of Cinderella, I think it’s okay. It has its moments, mostly from the cast, but it has the air of ‘how do you do, fellow kids’ that betrays its desire to be a youth-oriented show. You can feel Fennell stretching to try and keep many of the original fairy-tale’s elements or find modern parallels, like the Fairy Godmother being a plastic surgeon. Cindrella herself is a full-on girlboss, a goth who thinks the town of Belleville is shallow and selfish, whereas she’s cool and not like the other girls. But she’s still in love with the prince, Sebastian, of course. Also, there are a lot of Hunks in this show, which is legit fun. It’s not dazzling satire or an especially vibrant fairytale retelling, especially compared to something like Into the Woods, but I could tell who the show was for and how it could do well with that demographic, if they’d ironed out a few kinks.

Still, ALW was sure he’d have his next bona fide Broadway hit and prepared the show for a transfer. But before that could happen, he screwed up big time. The show publicly announced its closure on May 1, 2022. That news was not made to many of the cast and crew, who ended up finding out they were soon to be unemployed through the press. Actors and crew revolted. Lloyd Webber didn’t turn up at the closing performance, sending a statement wherein he referred to the show as a ‘costly mistake’, which caused the audience to boo. He later clarified that his words had been ‘misunderstood.’ When he took the show to America, it received a new name, Bad Cinderella, which everyone immediately dunked on for obvious reasons. Fennell’s book was revised by Alexis Scheer. The basic plot was the same but more jokes were added and some supporting characters were given more to do. It couldn’t save the show, alas, as Bad Cinderella was savaged by Broadway critics and closed after 85 performances.

In defence of Fennell, working with ALW is notoriously not easy. He’s never been enthusiastic about yielding control to collaborators, and he was clearly desperate for another West End hit regardless of the fallout. Ideally, all his book writers would be like T.S. Eliot when they worked together on Cats: dead for several years. And Fennell was never a major part of the musical’s marketing. It was sold as a Lord Andy joint with Fletcher as the star. I imagine a lot of her weirder and hornier ideas were probably thrown out in favour of a family-friendly tone. She got out of the Cinderella hurricane in one piece, and I do feel like musicals might actually be a good fit for her. Frankly, her preference for heated aesthetics and no-subtlety-required emotional bluntness could find a good partner in some of the stage’s most beloved works. Keep her away from Sondheim, but Phantom? She could make it work. I’m sure she’s wondered if Jacob Elordi can sing.