There are two types of people in the world: those that appreciate the musical catalog of one Britney Spears, and those who observe her stardom from afar. For those in the former category, myself included, the new musical Once Upon a One More Time, now playing at Broadway’s Marquis Theatre, promises at least a baseline level of fun: a jukebox show of Spears’s most popular songs (along with some deeper cuts), albeit one flimsily woven around a familiar and overdone pop-feminist revision of classic fairytales.
The often winsome and freshly choreographed show, from a book by Jon Hartmere, pulls not from Britney’s story – this is not a sanitized version of her electric career and often tragic life, a la Broadway’s MJ – but from obviously heartfelt appreciation and larger cultural reconsideration of her legacy. America’s former pop sweetheart takes the form of Cinderella (Briga Heelan), consigned to play the role of damsel in distress for an unwitting Prince Charming (Justin Guarini) over and over again in a meta-fairytale factory.
She’s best friends with a daffy, boisterous Snow White (Aisha Jackson, by far the vocal standout of the show) as well as several of the other princesses – Princess Pea (Morgan Whitley), Sleeping Beauty (Ashley Chiu), Little Mermaid (Lauren Zakrin), Rapunzel (Gabrielle Beckford) – who are kept uneducated and at the disposal of an all-controlling Narrator (Adam Godley) for performance of their textbook scenes. (The reader, a child played by Mila Weir and Isabella Ye, conjures said performances and at one points enters their magical forest; it is best not to think too hard about these layers.)
Living “happily ever after” but crying tears of loneliness at night (cue Lucky) Cinderella yearns for more – more freedom (a slight but unmistakable echo of the #FreeBritney movement), more control, a deeper love, an escape from the mandates of her stepmother (Jennifer Simard, drily relishing every line) and her airheaded stepsisters (Amy Hillner Larsen and Tess Soltau, successfully doing the most). In a bit that’s played both as a joke and then straight, the banished OFG (Brooke Dillman) – the Original Fairy Godmother, naturally – swoops in with a copy of the Feminine Mystique. Cue Spears’s more confident anthems (Stronger, Scream & Shout, Gimme More) and a feminist awakening.
The self-empowerment feels both outdated and over-familiar, especially given a recent spate of shows restyling traditional characters as feminist pop stars, namely & Juliet, a rewrite of Shakespeare set to the music of pop maestro/former Spears collaborator Max Martin. A clever spin on Spears’s Womanizer, in which the six princesses confront their duplicitous “princess-izer”, feels straight out of the musical Six, in which the deceased wives of King Henry VIII become modern pop avatars. It’s also a piece with modish efforts to view Spears’s chart success, her struggles, her conservatorship and the media’s genuinely atrocious treatment of her as some sort of feminist parable, rather than as a complicated journey within very traditional ideas of power, youth and sexuality.
But the plot and the pat female empowerment message, however earnestly delivered, are largely beside the point; the reason to see a Britney jukebox musical is to hear her music souped up with Broadway-caliber singers, orchestra, choreography and charisma. On this front, Once Upon a One More Time delivers more than not. Nostalgia value doesn’t always translate to stage; several of the numbers (Lucky, Everytime, Gimme More) had the unexpected effect of making me miss Spears’s signature baby-voiced, lightly fried delivery. But things kick into gear with the more bombastic numbers – Circus, Oops!, Work Bitch, Stronger – particularly thanks to a liberally used boom machine and vigorous choreography and direction by the husband and wife duo Keone and Mari Madrid. Spears was, famously, a dancer, and the choreography owes less to Broadway than the propulsive patterns of TikTok – heavy emphasis on hand movements, staccato motions, flexes and patterns befitting a screen-sized rewatch.
The sillier and more turbo-charged the tribute, the better. As the two-and-a-half-hour show goes on, it’s difficult to stick with Heelan, whose babyish performance as “Cin” and breathy, nimble voice – ironically, the most like Britney’s – strains to reach the heights of power and charisma delivered by co-stars in much more deliciously campy roles. Guarini, perhaps most famous for being the runner-up to Kelly Clarkson on the first American Idol, is a slyly perfect choice for a second-fiddle, unabashedly cartoonish character with acrobatic face muscles. And the biggest cheers of the evening went to Simard’s delightfully deranged rendition of Toxic; her unshakable evocation of deadpan striver, face frozen with disdain, was a show highlight.
Such ridiculousness levied the show’s too-gleaming sheen of feminism, which ends up feeling more plasticky than profound (beautiful, doe-eyed Cinderella remarking that OFG’s America sounds like “paradise for women” is one of a few eye-rolls.) Once Upon a One More Time resists the traps of over-analysis and over-identification, though as a feminist text and a retrospective on Spears’s catalog, a show still can’t have it all. But like even a mid entry into her oeuvre, there’s still enough pop confection to enjoy.
