The Britney Spears Musical Will Feature Fairy Tale Princesses (?) in a Book Club (??) Reading The Feminine Mystique (???)

Like every other major musical act of the past 40 years, Britney Spears is getting a jukebox musical. And now, plot details have finally emerged: It’s called Once Upon a One More Time and involves several fairy tale princesses reading The Feminine Mystique in a book club.

Take it away, the New York Times!

Unlike many jukebox musicals, this show will not be about Ms. Spears’s life (which has not been a fairy tale), but instead will offer a revisionist look at some legendary characters. In the show, a fortnightly book club whose members include Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty, is working its way through a collection of the Grimms’ fairy tales — the only book they have. But when the women wish for new reading material, a fairy godmother brings them Ms. Friedan’s feminist classic, “The Feminine Mystique,” and their lives are altered in unexpected ways.

I’m sorry, what? Where does Britney Spears come in? Perhaps Jon Hartmere, who has written the book for the musical, will explain:

“Cinderella is having an existential crisis, and she has a posse of famous princesses, and her stepmother is the main antagonist, 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.”

Nope, still not quite getting where Britney comes in. Jon?

“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. But it’s also superfun and funny.”

Still not quite clear on why in the hell they’ve taken this approach but honestly? I’m not mad at it, and when it makes its way to Broadway, I am absolutely going to see it.