By Cary Ginell

Everyone with a pulse knows about Cinderella: While exiting the royal ball she loses her glass slipper resulting in a handsome prince scouring the countryside looking for the girl whose foot to which it belongs.

In 2013, playwright Douglas Carter Beane countered this centuries-old premise by suggesting that Cinderella never lost her slipper in the first place.

At the end of the first act of Beane’s wacky, modernized musical version of the tale, Cindy loses her slipper, but then returns to snatch it up and dashes up one of the theater’s aisles. The curtain goes down and the audience begins to mutter, “Wait a minute, that’s not how it’s supposed to go.” In short, Beane’s “Cinderella” takes an ages-old fairy tale and rips it to shreds.

The stage musical version of the story got its start as a 1957 television special starring Julie Andrews and a new score by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Revived in 1965 (with Lesley Ann Warren and Stuart Damon) and then again in 1997 (with Brandy and Whitney Houston), the story retained its traditional fairy tale elements.

Beane’s controversial adaptation raised the ire of theater purists, who lambasted it, says one, for “trampling over the musical soul of a score from another era.”

But the Beane adaptation at the High Street Arts Center in Moorpark, which opened Jan. 31 and plays through March 2, has so much going for it that audiences will likely overlook the alleged shortcomings and just enjoy the ride.

To start with, there is Rachel Wilson, who was so wonderful as an understudy in High Street’s production of “Beauty and the Beast” last October. As she did before, Wilson exudes believable innocence as Ella (Cinderella’s new, abbreviated name), but fills her character out with a sense of pragmatic self-consciousness.

That attitude, plus Wilson’s sweet soprano, prompt the beauty in the Rodgers Hammerstein score, especially with Ella’s signature song, “In My Own Little Corner,” which is sung not in any corner but outside her Thomas Kinkadian fairy tale hovel.

The musical’s official title, “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” belies the fact that there is little left from the original show other than the songs. The romance has been replaced by irreverent attempts at contemporary humor that bring hoots from younger members of the audience. (Whatever happened to theater decorum, anyway?)

Modern-day expressions such as “win-win” were obviously not part of the vernacular in the 17 th century, but this is a fairy tale for the Instagram generation, and if you go with that, it works.

Kyle Crittelli plays Prince Topher (if you can shorten Cinderella to Ella, why not Prince Christopher as well?) with elegance while Melia Bacon brings a sophisticated nastiness to her role as Cinderella’s stepmother, now simply named Madame.

The biggest changes in the traditional characters come in the form of Cinderella’s previously wicked stepsisters, now given the names Gabrielle and Charlotte. Gabrielle, played with dim-witted goofiness by Melina Ortega, becomes Cindy’s gal-pal, while Taylor Foster’s Charlotte is a comically bitchy masterpiece.

Watch for Foster’s sensationally screwball performance of “Stepsister’s Lament,” which kicks off Act II. It brings the house down.

Beane’s adaptation adds three new characters: Sebastian, the prince’s conniving lord chancellor (played in a succinctly articulate manner, á la William Daniels as John Adams in 1776 by Maxwell Oliver), Jean-Michel (an idealist revolutionary, played by Joey Langford), and Lord Pinkleton, Sebastian’s fastidious town crier, played by Cody Weber.

All sing well and deliver their respective punchlines with precision. The fabulous Becca Peyton is ideally cast as Marie, Cinderella’s fairy godmother who sings a resonant, operatically melodious version of “There’s Music in You,” written for the 1953 film, “Main Street to Broadway,” and added for the 1997 revival.

Paige Pensivy and Austyn Smith’s choreography is livened up by two exceptional, acrobatic performances by Emma Busby (Raccoon) and Gabriella Perry (Fox). Barbara Mazeika’s costumes are as colorful as they are elegant. Patrick Duffy’s lighting design goes well with the evocative AI-inspired video wall settings.

“Cinderella” plays through March 2 at the High Street Arts Center in Moorpark. For tickets, call (805) 529-8700 or go to highstreetartscenter.com.

Photo Courtesy Rebecca Curci