A jukebox musical, based on the music of Britney Spears, is in the works.
That sentence makes sense. Tell me more.
Said musical, titled Once Upon A One More Time (get it?), will be about Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel.
Um, that's random, but okay.
The four princesses are in a book club.
Wait, you're starting to lose me.
Bored of the only book they own—a collection of the Grimms’ fairy tales—they wish for a new book.
Part of being in a book club is wishing you had picked a better book, so this checks out.
A fairy godmother appears and grants them their wish in the form of Betty Friedan's feminist classic, The Feminine Mystique.
What the fuuuuuuu....???
This premise might sound like fan-fic written by a women's studies major who did a hit of acid while watching the Disney channel, but it's actually the basis of a real production, set to start previews on October 29, 2019 at the James M. Nederlander Theater in Chicago.
Jon Hartmere, who wrote the book for the musical, expanded on the show's themes:
"These women have been in this hermetically sealed world, and then they start to get deeper into modern ideas — second and third-wave feminism — and also explore how stories are passed down to us, and where we get our norms from."
What Britney Spears has to do with princesses getting woke is still unclear, but the more I think about it, the pairing does have promise. Here are a few connections the musical will hopefully take advantage of:
Okay, I've managed to convince myself that this wackadoo musical is going to be stupendous. Consider track seven from Britney's debut album my RSVP:
