About this book
George Calderon's Cinderella recasts the familiar fairy tale as a mordant, Ibsen-inflected pantomime—a satirical play where social unease and dry comedy outshine glass slippers. Set on a bleak, cheerless heath overlooking a fjord, Calderon populates his stage with an Ibsenesque Mrs. Inquest, her step-daughter Hilda, and the long-suffering Hedda, whose engagement to the hapless Tesman sparks a succession of barbed domestic scenes.
Blending sharp humor with literary parody, Cinderella skewers the solemnities of late-Victorian drama and the emerging modernist theatrical voice, turning familiar tropes into comic critique. Written as a spirited rough draft and published posthumously in 1922, the play offers a window into Calderon’s theatrical intelligence—an affectionate, irreverent lampoon of Ibsen that never loses its theatrical warmth. As a work of satire and humor within the fiction and play genres, it delights through witty dialogue, stagecraft-aware gags, and a persistent sense of the absurd.
Ideal for fans of satirical theatre, readers curious about literary parodies of Ibsen, and audiobook listeners who enjoy sharp, performative comedy, this audiobook delivers a compact, clever take on a classic story with a decidedly modern sting.
