NOTE: this show has been postponed to as-yet unnanoucend dates in 2022
Jump in your enormous pumpkin coach, because you shall go to the ball. Opera Australia and the Gordon Frost Organisation have announced who will slip on the glass slippers when they present the Australian premiere of Tony Award-wining Broadway sensation Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella at the Capitol Theatre this December.
Shubshri Kandiah, who made her professional debut as Princess Jasmine in the Australian tour of Disney’s Aladdin and wowed in teen musical Fan Girls will lead us on an echanted evening in the title role, with her Aladdin co-star Ainsley Melham as the charming Prince Topher. Cats, Les Misérables and Mamma Mia! star Silvie Paladino is the fairy godmother, Tina Bursill (Grease) as the wicked stepmother, and Todd McKenney (The Boy From Oz) as the Lord Chancellor.
You’ll get all the fairytale wonder you expect and more, but there’s a new twist to this beloved classic. It might be set in a realm of magic and wonder, but the poor, unloved girl who is cruelly cast off by her stepmother and set to sweeping floors actually hails from our modern times. Expect her to have plenty to say, then, about what a woman wants, and to forge her own way to happily ever after, dragging the prince along with her.
Rodgers and Hammerstein originally wrote their take on the beloved bedtime story for a 1957 telemovie starring the inimitable Julie Andrews. She scored an Emmy for it, no less, seven years before she was swept up, up and above London’s chimneys in big-screen fantasy Mary Poppins. Her turn as Cinderella drew a whopping 100 million viewers. Many have followed in her footsteps since, including a 1997 re-do featuring Brandy, Whitney Houston and Whoopi Goldberg.
Tickets are on sale now, but get in quick, because with this stellar cast sparkling, they are sure to disappear faster than a powder blue ball gown at the stroke of midnight. Make a wish and get booking here.
