By Paul Horsley

What if we made a Cinderella in which, instead of a noble prince rescuing a desperate girl, we tell a tale of two people sort of rescuing each other? That’s just what playwright Douglas Carter Beane set out to do in his new version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, which was a hit on Broadway in 2013 and appears on tour as part of Starlight Theatre’s 2015 season starting July 7th. When Rodgers & Hammerstein President Ted Chapin spoke with producer Robyn Goodman (of Tony Award-winning Avenue Q and In the Heights) about a Broadway version of the 1957 television production (with Julie Andrews in the title role), they wanted a book that added a bit of contemporary attitude and even bite to the tale. It turns out that instead of reinventing some sort of feminist modern telling, Douglas (The Little Dog Laughed, Xanadu) was able to return to Charles Perrault’s 1697 version (Cendrillon) for a more nuanced version of the story than the one traditionally seen on stage and screen.

“I wanted to make [the Prince] a guy,” said Douglas, who said he resisted idea of a new Cinderella until he realized he could make the characters more real. “I wanted to make it a story that a young girl would see and go, ‘That’s the Prince I should be looking for. I should be looking for a complicated guy who’s good … but needs a little help.” Likewise he wanted boys to be able to identify with the story and not feel they had to be some sort of wise, handsome superman. “I wanted little boys to look up at him and identify with him, like ‘I don’t feel perfect.’ ” He called them Ella and Topher because “those would look like names that would be in a kindergarten now” and he made them orphans. “They’re both trying to get through their life and neither of their guardians is doing a particularly good job!”

Rodgers & Hammerstein had created only enough music for a 90-minute telecast, so Douglas went foraging for songs the famous team left by the wayside. He found “Me, Who Am I?” which had been cut from the show Me and Juliet, and “He Was Tall, Very Tall” originally intended for The King and I. Then it was a matter of making the tale relevant for an audience that had seen Wicked and Shrek and Fractured Fairy Tales, not to mention Rossini’s Cenerentola and Prokofiev’s ballet Soluschka. “These stories stick around because they’re touching stuff deep within us,” Douglas said. “They have informed the way we view life, because these are the stories we’re told to at a very particular time.”

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, which runs at Starlight Theatre July 7th through the 12th, features KC native Kaitlyn Davidson (who won the Starlight’s Blue Star Award for Outstanding Actress in a Lead Role in both 2004 and 2005) as the evil stepsister Gabrielle. It features set designs by Anna Louizos and Tony Award-winning costumes by William Ivey Long. Call 816-363-7827 or go to kcstarlight.com.

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