BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Chichester Youth Theatre at Chichester Festival Theatre

16.12.2017

No compromises in this year’s Youth Theatre offering. The deeper themes and complex emotions are fearlessly explored. And all the professional support – music, design, choreography and more – that makes Chichester musicals so special is devoted to the service of these talented young performers.

This is a poignant re-imagining of the fairy tale – scripted by Anna Ledwich, with songs by Richard Taylor. As the lyrics say in the final scene, “not at all at all what we expected”.

The core story is framed, and shaped, by evacuees, leaving London for the Sussex countryside, and billeted in a creepy old country house. Sinister rumblings, an off-limits South Wing, a strict housekeeper all make the displaced youngsters nervous – they devise a scenario, which they share with newcomers, and with us, the audience. And a game of hide and seek leads us in to some dark places and the fairytale proper.

The two title characters are superbly imagined, and confidently portrayed. Beauty [Mia Cunningham-Stockdale] is named less for her looks than for her virtue; she’s a feisty horticulturalist, the Cordelia who rejects a ball-gown for a gold lamé trouser suit. And eventually saves the Beast with a wonderful love duet.

He’s played by Hal Darling, inside an amazing exoskeleton puppet, magnifying his every move as his voice is manipulated. He’s genuinely scary but believably human, powerful but vulnerable.

There are many other memorable characters – Mr Villeneuve [George Bailey], tea merchant and Beauty’s father, his ugly-sister daughters and his dim twittish sons, Winston the pack-horse puppet, Dot D’Otter the messenger, Kiki the outrageously camp stylist [Crispin Glancy], Reg the Racoon. Not forgetting the refugee children themselves, who carry much of the narrative.

The show is packed with magic and marvellous stagecraft – big production numbers like the feast and the London sequence, and a wonderful library with avian volumes flapping overhead. Exemplary ensemble work, with every performer given a distinct character.

Beauty and the Beast is directed by Dale Rooks, with designer Simon Higlett, costume designer Ryan Dawson Laight, movement director Lizzi Gee and puppetry specialist Nick Barnes. How fortunate these youngsters are to gain experience in this professional environment, and how lucky Chichester is to have such a fantastic Christmas show … pantos, after all, are two-a-penny …

many of the roles are double-cast – the names here are those appearing on Press Night

production photograph: Pete Jones

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Little Waltham Drama at the Memorial Hall

21.01.15

Fresh faces and a new creative team for this year's show from a group with a strong tradition in village pantomime.

Directors Hannah Walker and Louise Louth wisely retain some of the most cherished features – the proscenium paintings and the confectionery walkabout, this time to a piano rag from the excellent orchestra of Dave Perry and Trevor Lee.

They cope impressively with a bright mixture of music: Steps, Wham and One Direction as well as Oliver and Aspects of Love. The chorus, stylishly dressed, get some great numbers [choreographed by Kim Travell], including Power of Love and a nice arrangement of Best Song Ever.

The successful mix of youth and experience is exemplified in the great comedy duo of [Tweedle]Dick and Dom [Ryan Chapman and Ken Little] – shame they don't have a funnier script to work with; it's noticeable that the best laughs come from the ad-libs. Brian Corrie gets his share, too, this year he's attempting a French accent …

Rebekah Walker makes a superb Rose – her “Yesterday” a musical highlight – nicely contrasted, especially in their dance duet, with her giant of a beast, Ash Cobden, transformed to a dashing Prince, but keeping enough hair for a fashionable hipster beard.

Rather too much of the story, when it surfaces, is entrusted to the good vs evil pairing of Vicky Weavers [fairy dust and smartphone in her reticule] and crabby Julie Cole. Other ingredients include a proper pantomime cow, a bungling inventor, a hilarious sing-along, a gorilla ghost routine and a formidable Dame in the shape of Viv Abrey's Nanny Ivy.

Like many of us, she's going through an out-of-money experience, reduced to Tesco for a birthday teddy bear for young Rose. But she couldn't get better value entertainment than this friendly village panto, the latest in a long line stretching back to the first Cinderella in the early Seventies.

production photograph: Peter Travell

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

The Rock'n'Roll Panto at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

02.12.2014

for The Public Reviews

Peter Rowe's latest Rock'n'Roll panto, directed by Rob Salmon, takes the Beauty and the Beast fairytale, with its generous slug of Cinderella, and serves with generous measures of great music.

All performed by ten phenomenally talented actor-musicians.

That's the Wolsey tradition, as are live sound effects from the keyboard, the punning show-and-tell props, and the cuddly animals augmenting the chorus.

It's great to see the colourful characters creep back on to take their place on the band-stand – the Good Fairy on sax, the Dame on guitar – but when you promote the pit to the stage, there's not a lot of space left for scenery. We have to use our imaginations for the scary forest and the Castle of the Beast, though Barney George's all-purpose art deco design is a masterpiece of restrained elegance.

Much of the action, including the amazing flying chicken, takes place on Mucky Manor farm. And the jokes are sometimes none too clean; Bessie Bigbreaths, Eamonn Fleming's down-to-earth Dame, sets the tone, in a cheeky performance which recalls the golden age of the Crazy Gang. Sporting farmyard chic, a provocative “pulling dress” and a wedding outfit for the walk-down including a halo of peacock's feathers. [Beauty's dad, the Baron Hardup figure, is Sir Peacock Beauregarde, played by Daniel Carter-Hope.]

Not a weak performance amongst these panto pro's: Dan de Cruz not only did the Prince/Beast double – perhaps too beastly crude for the “kind and generous” monster – but also two completely different messengers, one of whom had the excellent “Generally Hospitable” joke …

Esther Biddle makes a lovely, maternal Godmother, and handles the verse-speaking impeccably, the Ugly Sisters [very stylish, with their nearly-labels designer bags] are Sarah Mahony and Nicola Bryan, and poor little Beauty is Lucy Wells in a girlish dress; even for the wedding she only gets a slightly more flattering outfit.

Broker's Men, with loads of physical comedy, are Ben Goffe and Adam Langstaff, and Desperate Dan is engagingly done by Matt Jopling.

Those great old songs are key to the show's success of course: Let Me Entertain You [Robbie, not Gypsy] for the Beast's pyrotechnic finale to Act One, impressively styled by De Cruz, Perfect, with Fairy sax solo, When Will I See You Again, belted out by Bessie in the style of a club vocalist, and the O'Jays' Love Train for the carefully choreographed encore.

Quickfire gags, audience participation, with Andrew from row D relishing his fifteen seconds of fame, Jekyll and Hyde moments and a tip-top playlist make for hugely enjoyable panto fun. It even manages to be true, in its fashion, to the eighteenth century original, with the evil fairy, the merchant and the magic mirror ...

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester

03.12.2011

for The Public Reviews

The Mercury's lavish Christmas shows are among the brightest of the repertory pantos. This year's Beauty and the Beast, written and directed by Janice Dunn, has all the traditional Colchester elements in place. First, the superb sparkly design [Foxton]: a crazy enchanted forest, at the heart of the plot, with its gnarled branches and Magic Flute serpent. It has a green glade stage right for the Good Fairy Rosa [Josephine Warren], and a sinister lair opposite for the evil Botoxia, though she seems to pop up, unwanted, everywhere, with her amazing costume and make-up. The show still boasts some proper dancing [choregrapher Cydney Uffindell-Phillips, dance captain Daniel Tawse] and the wonderful Mercury Junior Chorus, this year disguised as super furry animals and the Toxic Monkeys. And, in the pit, genial Graeme Du Fresne and his men, with an eclectic mix of music, including the season's most unlikely segue, from Lady Gaga to Carousel and back again, in Belle and the Beast's Act Two duet.

The twist this year was the ecological re-write of the old tale, with Clare Humphrey's vile Botoxia ["nobody likes you!", one tot called out from the stalls] scheming to turn the palace into a factory, replace the forest with concrete and choke the earth with foul pollutants. The Beast, impressively sung and spoken by a lithe, fiddle-playing Pete Ashmore, turns out to be her brother, and, though he is transformed at the end, it is merely a spiritual transformation. I liked the interplay between Ashmore and his Belle [Emily Bull], a very rom-com courtship this, adding girl power to the PC ticklist.

Maybe the younger patrons would have liked more of the slapstick and the quickfire silly gags, rather than all that Green allegory. We did have David Tarkenter and Thomas Richardson as a poacher double-act [a splendid "ghost" routine, pursued by a bear], Mercury stalwart Roger-Delves Broughton as poor old Bertie, and the energetic, appealing Dale Superville, this year playing Rolo the Ranger, at his best as his alter ego superhero Pie-Man. Ably assisted by Squirrel Nutcase, a distant cousin of Basil Brush.

It was Ignatius Anthony's turn to don the frocks this year, and a splendidly butch Dame Twiggy he made, with his coop of clucking beauties. Old Mother Riley was referenced in the script, in the programme, and in the lovely little bit of an Irish Reel.

We cheered as Botoxia finally sank into the Quick Sand and the rhyming couplets rounded off another Mercury pantomime. We even sang the interminable Flower Song while everyone changed for the excellently staged wedding walk-down – a regal yellow furry creation for Ignatius – with the Monkeys changed back into the innocent village children as the forest is saved for the future.

production photo by Robert Day

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
CAODS at the Civic Theatre
21.09.10


It's a while since Barrowman was the Beast, and now this lavish Disney spin-off is available for the more ambitious amateur groups.
In a fitting finale to CAODS' 90th anniversary year, Ray Jeffery's done a class job on this marathon musical, with its tricky transformations, its smoke and mirrors and its spectacular production numbers. Be Our Guest, of course, a culinary cabaret with Lumiere as Emcee [the excellent Ben Martins with a fruity French accent], but also Human Again, again started off by the candlestick. Sarah Barton gave a pleasingly old-fashioned musical comedy performance as the bookworm Belle, battling with the primeval Gaston [Richard Harrison] as well as the Beast – a touching performance from Gareth Barton, finding emotional depths from within the latex – a better Beast than a beau for Belle, perhaps. Another nuanced character from Trevor Lowman as Belle's father, mad inventor and victim of fate; Jimmy Hooper was a larger-than-life New Yorker LeFou. The Silly Girls were effective too, somewhere between Three Little Maids and the Ugly Sisters. The dancing was superb, from the camp cutlery to the athletic Wolves.
Among the castle staff trapped in household objects I enjoyed the Salt and Pepper, the Rug, Kevin Abrey's conceited Cogsworth, Rachael Brown's bubbly Babette, and especially Diana Baker's Teapot, spout steaming, with her boy Chip in the cup, played with huge confidence on opening night by Noah Miller, with Charlie Hughes confined to the cupboard for some other performances.
Ray Jeffery was assisted by Claire Carr, and the Dance Captain was Sue Buxton.
Patrick Tucker's pit musicians were on splendid form, especially noticeable in Belle's big number, with its Andrew Lloyd Webber aspirations, Is This Home?. The sets looked impressive, especially the moving castle, though they were clearly a challenge to change. Maybe costume, or at least proper blacks [with gloves!], for the hard-pressed crew. The costumes were colourful, clever and just cartoony enough …

Photographs by Christopher Yorke-Edwards