Mr. Cinders

Mr. Cinders is a musical produced in the UK in 1928.

The music is by Vivian Ellis and Richard Myers, and the libretto by Clifford Grey and Greatrex Newman. The story is an inversion of the Cinderella fairy tale with the gender roles reversed. The Prince Charming character has become a modern (1928) young and forceful woman, and Mr. Cinders is a menial. The show captures the last frantic gasps of the roaring twenties before the gloom of the Great Depression settled in.

After a tryout in Blackpool in September 1928 and three-month provincial tour, the musical opened in London at the Adelphi Theatre on 11 February 1929 and moved to the London Hippodrome on 15 July 1929. It ran for 528 performances. It starred Bobby Howes and Binnie Hale, and became a signature piece especially for Howes. The musical had immediate international success in continental Europe and elsewhere. A revival took place at the Streatham Hill Theatre in April 1930, and the show was adapted for film in 1934.

The show was revived at the Fortune Theatre in April, 1983 with Denis Lawson in the title role and ran for 527 performances. When Lawson left the show Lonnie Donegan took over the part, quickly followed by Lionel Blair, but without Lawson the show soon folded.

Goodspeed Opera House revived the piece in 1988. It was also revived in 1996 by the Shaw Festival.

The currently available professional score is for: 2 pianos, cello and single woodwind player alternating between flute and soprano saxophone. There is no conductor's score showing all the parts. 1st piano is the basic accompanying instrument although the part does not entirely suffice on its own; 2nd piano tends to play mostly decorative jazzy arabesques over the foundation of the first piano although it does (inconveniently) sometimes carry essential tune fragments; the cello part is melodic and is not a bass line; the woodwind part can be easily and effectively played on the clarinet, the few flute parts being transposed by the player. The score is stylistically something along the lines of a cross between Billy Meyerl and George Gershwin and in fact a melody fragment from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is quoted within the 20th Century Drag.

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