Mercury offers feel-good boy-meets-boy fairytale, ‘Soho Cinders’

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, American Theatre Critics Association

 

Composer George Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe have made a career out of adding music to famous fairytales like “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Three Little Pigs” and “Mary Poppins,” and bringing them to the stage.

 

In Mercury Theatre’s “Soho Cinders,” a show that received its world premiere in London’s off-West End in 2012 and has rarely been seen elsewhere since, the Cinderella story has been significantly re-envisioned.  Its infrequent stagings are no doubt due to the nature of its reincarnation as a decidedly naughty modern musical rather than the quality of the work itself, which is arguably some of Stiles and Drewe’s best.

 

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