One would think Once Upon A One More Time would have flourished on Broadway. It’s exactly the type of show that Broadway loves to promote. It’s another commercial, feel-good musical with music an entire fandom already loves.
After the musical received poor reviews in out of town tryouts in Washington D.C., the creative team went back to the drawing board and made some edits. Still, after 42 previews on Broadway the show opened and received less than perfect reviews. Now Once Upon A One More Time is the first new Broadway musical to close this season. So why did Once Upon A One More Time play less than 100 official performances on Broadway?
1. It’s Too Similar To & Juliet
& Juliet opened last Broadway season, in November. The show also takes popular songs and sets it to a classic story, but instead of Cinderella, it takes Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. In fact, & Juliet already uses 5 Brittney Spears songs, 3 of which Once Upon A One More Time uses as well. Just like & Juliet, Once Upon A One More Time is once again trying to take a classic story and spin it, taking a feminist angle. At this point & Juliet has already done this plot and rather successfully considering this week (8/27/23) the show grossed $1,024,902. Despite its unexpected closing, Once Upon A One More Time only grossed $451,814 this week. To put that into perspective that is not even half of what & Juliet earned this week. The point is, Once Upon A One More Time did not offer anything original and if we were comparing who did this plot better, the writing of & Juliet is slightly stronger.
2. The Characters Aren’t Deep
Personally, I did not find any of the characters to be particularly deep. Most of the characters seemed flat. They all felt like they were there to move the story along and did not have much of a personality. Even Cinderella and Prince Charming who are intended to be the main characters had few wants and needs. Prince Charming was just a narcissist whose only goal was to win over Cinderella. And it didn’t really seem like Cinderella or the other girls knew what they wanted other than to have some feminist awakening. I wish the 2 gay characters had more depth to them as well. It felt pointless just to add them in there just to have one small moment in Act 2 where they kissed. Overall the characters were just unrealistic, which made it hard to empathize with them.
3. It’s A Poor Representation Of The Women Experience
It’s no surprise that a man wrote the script for this show. While Jon Hartmere is a fantastic writer, he didn’t quite convey the misogyny that women endure on a daily basis. It was more like “here is what misogyny looks like to me, having never experienced it”, hence why the representation of discrimination and misogyny in the show were very surface level. Occasionally we would see characters who were men act rude and arrogant to the characters who were women, but unfortunately misogyny is so much more than this. It’s systemic and intersectional. It runs much deeper than audiences see in the show and Once Upon A One More Time did not even begin to capture it. I hope the musical did not give men the wrong idea about sexism and make men think it’s a lot more simplistic than it actually is.
I wish the cast and crew involved in this show the utmost success in their future endeavours as they are all extremely talented. Let me know what you thought of this show in the comments and if you agree/disagree with me!
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