A Tale of Cinderella: a play, by WA Frankonis
★ ★ ★ ★
“LA STELLA: Have faith in the stars, child.
CINDERELLA. The stars are so far away, GodMama.
LA STELLA. But their light gets here ... all the way to the earth, little angel. Faster than I can catch up with my voice… (…A shower of stars begins in the background.)
CINDERELLA. Oh ... the stars are falling!
LA STELLA. No, just visiting. Now, two spoonfuls of marinara moonlight ... and La Stella is here again! (Light dims, upstage door of kitchen flies open, mist wriggles in, out of which steps LA STELLA.) And all in one piece. Hah … travel by fog! It's nice! (She is somehow glitterier. She wields a wand which looks like nothing more than a huge wooden spoon…)”
TITLE—A Tale of Cinderella
AUTHOR—WA Frankonis
PUBLISHED—1994
PUBLISHER—Samuel French Inc.
GENRE—a play, well, a musical actually…
SETTING—Venice, Italy, anywhere from late Renaissance to mid-19th century.
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Italian folktales, family dynamics, evil stepmother figure, father-daughter relationship, music & songs, funny older lady & her sweet, clever, & comical elderly man love-interest, gondolas, really clever fairy godmother reimagining (the wood spoon for a wand was particularly *mwah*), finding true love, abusive step-siblings, grief, loss of mother, hope & faith, the stars
“LA STELLA. … Now off with you. A special gondola waits ... driven by moonbeams. If it must, at midnight it can be back here ... (She snaps her fingers.) ... sùbito, like that. (CINDERELLA gratefully embraces LA STELLA and goes off.) Ah … so nice ... you look like good canoli tastes. Speciale.”
My thoughts:
Adapted from the Brothers Grimm Tale, “Cinderella,” A TALE OF CINDERELLA by WA Frankonis is a musical set in Venice Italy that was originally produced in 1994 by the New York State Theater Institute. Apparently the NYST Institute has also produced dramatizations of The Snow Queen & Vasilisa the Beautiful (the Baba Yaga tale) so I definitely need to get my hands on those somehow…
There is a recording of a performance of this musical put on in 1998 of which all I could find online was footage recorded off of a TV posted on youtube but the performance was rather uninspiring (even forgiving the awkward format)—the humor was really the best part of this adaptation & what little I watched of that performance did not capture any of that very well at all (I mean, the “Unmarried Women” song ends with “At least take one of them!”—it’s so Italian & hilarious & I would LOVE to see this adapted properly by a troupe that “got it”!)—so I was happy just using my imagination for this one. I was basically imagining something that was a mix between Netflix’s Odio Il Natale, Alan Menken’s Beauty & the Beast (especially the first song: “Buongiorno”—it was exactly that same thing as the “Belle” song), Bock, Harnick, & Stein’s The Fiddler on the Roof, & Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate. Cinderella had some definite Cosette energy going on to begin Act II as well.
Cinderella is probably my least favorite fairy tale (it’s a personal thing) but I really appreciated that the Cinderella in this adaptation was a lot more headstrong in this adaptation, not as insufferably “nice” as she is usually made out to be in the originals or even in most retellings, & she stands up for herself & her father a lot more which is probably also why she reminded me a little bit more of Belle than Cinderella.
The Italian setting, vibes, dialogue, & humor were an excellent backdrop to this story. I thought Il Compari & La Stella (the Prince & Cinderella’s godparents respectively) were by far the best characters. La Stella made a fantastic fairy godmother with her hilarious comic old lady attitude & wooden spoon for a magic wand. But I loveddd Il Compari—he kind of had that nonbinary uncle backstage MC energy (like Clopin in The Hunchback of Notre Dame—another Menken!—or Bojangles in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride). I’m tempted to make my family do this play as our Christmas pantomime so I can play Il Compari. I think I could deliver his lines perfectly… 🤣
But the fun didn’t stop there! There was also a really strange weird little creepy “Demons and Devils and Witches” dream song? that I’m not sure what it had to do with the story unless it’s specifically from the Italian version of Cinderella (Cenerentola, which I haven’t read yet) but it was fun! I was definitely getting those Macbeth & Hamlet vibes from it too, which makes me feel like this really is such a good pick for Fall.
On another note, I learned what the word dishabille—“the state of being only partly or scantily clad”—means from this play… so yeah…
“(sung) CHORUS. Come up from the cellar, Cinderella,
Show the world that under all those smudges
you’re bella.”
I would recommend this book to readers who want to explore a different take on the Cinderella featuring a Venetian setting, some spooky season vibes, & Italian cultural elements, language, & humor. This book is best read if you enjoy reading plays & can recreate the visuals, actors’ delivery, & music in your head.
Final note: This was such a lucky find at my favorite used bookstore in my area & I finally had a play to read for #ReadingWizBingo last month!
PASSENGER. So the tale has a happy ending ... they lived happily ever after!
GONDOLIER. Ah ... well ... they live in Venice still, true ... Angelina all grown up as I said ... but happily ...? Who knows? She has a hard life now, with a stepmother and stepsisters. Her story is not yet finished, signóre, so come, I have another story with an ending that will make you laugh ....
★ ★ ★ ★
Season: Fall
Music pairing: Italian folk music
Further Reading—
THE TALE OF TALES by Giambattista Basile
CONFESSIONS OF AN UGLY STEPSISTER by Gregory Maguire
Review coming soon!
MIRROR MIRROR by Gregory Maguire (a Snow White retelling but it’s set in Italy so the vibes were similar)
CINDERELLA IS DEAD by Kalynn Bayron
HARROWING THE DRAGON by Patricia McKillip
IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN by Sarah Dunant
One of my favorite childhood reads—Bucino Teodoldi was my first favorite fictional character in whom I saw a bit of myself—set in historical Venice.
Reading List for all of my Cinderella-adjacent recommendations coming soon!
those other two plays—The Snow Queen & Vasilisa the Beautiful (the Baba Yaga tale)—from the NYST Institute