Young Cinderella, you might know, is a believer in the power of the possible, especially when it comes to love.
“The sweetest sounds I’ll ever hear,” she sings to us, “are still inside my head. The kindest words I’ll ever know … are waiting to be said.”
Sitting there solo at the Paramount Theatre Sunday afternoon, deep in a row of diverse young families watching what felt like a million twinkling lights illuminate the stage of that grand old theater, I had one of those moments where you observe to no one in particular that there is nowhere else you’d rather be.
Everything was working as only in the theater it can. Especially at the holidays.
We had a beautiful singer in Mikayla Renfrow. The near-perfect lyric that gets right to the point of the show and combines both the poetic and the unpretentiously accessible. And then the Richard Rodgers melody: determined, empowering and self-assured and yet nurturing, gentle and kind, all at the same time. All of the tensions of the weekend just seemed to fall away; in one song, the audience knows that this Cinderella deserved far more and also that she surely will not only find her handsome prince, but their love with be better than the world that surrounds them.
Yes, all of that in the first 10 minutes.
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That music is the advantage of doing Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” over all those other holiday shows, especially if you have a 15-piece orchestra in the pit. This musical, which began as a television special starring Julie Andrews in 1957, comes replete with the most gorgeous score. The stage version has updates (“The Sweetest Sounds” actually was inserted from a different musical) and takes care to make Cinderella’s determination part of her destiny, ensuring that her future is not merely determined by the size of her feet. But Paramount’s production, directed by Brenda Didier, never forgets that the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs are a key part of this experience.
I’d head out to Aurora just to hear the pitch-perfect Renfrow sing this score, delightful as she is in so many other ways. And, for the record, her Prince Charming, played by Markcus Blair, gives her a good run for her money, or would if Cinderella had any.
All musical romances require an audience to will the leading couple to end up together and, since we always weigh the likelihood of their future happiness in our heads, that means we have to believe these characters, as embodied by these actors, will take care of each other, forever and always. And that’s why this production works so beautifully.
It’s not the only reason. Paramount has built its success in homegrown musicals by offering stellar production values and superb musical direction. So it goes here.
Whomever supplies twinkling lights out there in the City of Aurora must be running short on supply, given the number of tiny flashes embedded by Victoria Bain on Angela Weber Miller’s storybook set. And if you’re a fan of ballgowns and princess dresses that go beyond the usual, Theresa Ham’s costume design is stacked with delights. Cinderella is quite the fashion-plate, no matter her economic circumstances.
The singing is top-notch, all night long. Humor flows from the likes of Lorenzo Rush, Jr. and Sarah Bockel, and Jerica Exum makes for the kind of fairy godmother we all wish we have.
Much is rightly made of theater’s ability to offer balm and healing for each and every one, even if it doesn’t always makes that choice these days. Yet this show is restorative in every sense of that word.
As Cinderella sings, hopefully for you and yours, “the most entrancing sight of all is yet for me to see.”
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Cinderella”
When: Through Jan. 9
Where: Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Tickets: $54-$118.50 at 630-896-666 or paramountaurora.com
COVID protocol: Audience members must provide proof of vaccination, or a negative COVID-19 PCR test from the last 72 hours, or a negative antigen test from the last 24 hours. Masks are required in the theater.