Britney Spears Musical, ‘Once Upon a One More Time’, to debut in 2019

The play will incorporate songs from the musical catalogue of the 37-year-old icon in a story that “explores an alternative arc for some classic fairy tale princesses,” theatre owner James L. Nederlander announces on  Tuesday, 12 March.

The show is set to start production this fall in Chicago and then seeks to transfer to Broadway.

Here’s the plot summary, via the New York Times: “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. [Betty] Friedan’s feminist classic, The Feminine Mystique, and their lives are altered in unexpected ways.”

Kristin Hanggi will direct. The musical’s book is written by Jon Hartmere, who was a writer for Bare, a musical about gay Christian teenagers.

“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 super fun and funny.” Hartmere says.

The musical has already had several readings, and Britney attended one of them. It includes 23 of her songs, including her hits and “a couple of deep album cuts.”