Theater owner James L. Nederlander announced a brand-new musical comedy on Tuesday called Once Upon a One More Time, featuring songs made popular by the one and only Britney Spears.
And not only is Nederlander using Spears' songs in the upcoming story, it'll revolve around classic fairy-tale characters, including Cinderella and Snow White, who will see their lives reimagined through the pop star's music.
A press release about the show described it as "an uproarious, irreverent look at the towering challenges, charms, and choices involved in finding that most elusive of endings: Happily Ever After."
*Ahem* Into the Woods is shaking!
“I’m so excited to have a musical with my songs — especially one that takes place in such a magical world filled with characters that I grew up on, who I love and adore,” said Spears, who worked closely with Nederlander for three years to develop a concept for the show.
"This is a dream come true for me!" she said.
Jon Hartmere (The Upside, Bare) will write the story, Kristin Hanggi (Rock of Ages) will be responsible for direction, and Keone and Mari Madrid (TV's World of Dance; Justin Bieber’s "Love Yourself”) are tasked with choreography.
The plot sounds, well, complicated.
“Cinderella is having an existential crisis, and she has a posse of famous princesses, and her stepmother is the main antagonist," Hartmere told the New York Times about the upcoming project, "and there’s also Prince Charming and a dwarf we’ve never met — the eighth dwarf — and a narrator who is unhappy his system is being dismantled before his eyes."
The characters in the musical have their lives changed after reading Betty Friedan's groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique.
“These women have been in this hermetically sealed world, and then they start to get deeper into modern ideas — second- and third-wave feminism — and also explore how stories are passed down to us, and where we get our norms from," Hartmere told the Times.
"But it’s also super fun and funny.”
Ahead of its Nov. 13 opening, performances will begin for Once Upon a One More Time on Oct. 29 at the James M. Nederlander Theatre in Chicago.
The limited pre-Broadway engagement will go on through Dec. 1.