Beauty and More Beauty

Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST – The Musical

Birmingham Hippodrome, Wednesday 9^th March 2022

Disney’s best musical is back, touring stages across the country in this revamped production that pulls out all the stops to impress.  New sets and costumes dazzle and delight while remaining faithful to the original animated film, and all in service of the story.  For example, the wolf attacks are represented here by some rather scary animations, rather than the dancers in furry headpieces and leg warmers of yesteryear!  This is a production that uses bang up-to-date theatrical technology to deliver the goods, and boy, does it deliver!

Leading the cast in this performance is Grace Swaby-Moore as bookish, beautiful Belle, whose voice soars with clarity and purity befitting her character.  She is more than matched by Shaq Taylor as the Beast, who manages to be intimidating, funny, and sympathetic all at once.  He too has a rich singing voice, and his solo to close the first act is stirring stuff.  It’s genuinely heart-warming to watch these two fall in love.  I might be a little in love with Shaq Taylor, I freely admit.

A superb supporting cast keep the entertainment levels consistently at ten.  Tom Senior’s vain and posturing Gaston is a hoot, forming a hilarious double-act with diminutive sidekick Le Fou, played by Louis Stockil, who is like a living cartoon character with energetic physical comedy and facial expressions that are purely delightful.

Gavin Lee’s louche Lumiere with his deadpan French accent is perfect — no one can hold a candle to him! — while Nigel Richards’s tightly wound Cogsworth is as charming as he is overwrought.  Samantha Bagley’s Madame, half-woman, half-armoire, is a marvellously funny piece of character work.  Sam Bailey’s gorblimey Mrs Potts the teapot, is sweet; her rendition of the title song while the title characters dance is a goosebumps moment I will never forget.

There are massive production numbers:  Be Our Guest is a Busby Berkeley fever dream that brings the house down.  Gaston is exhilarating.  And the solo numbers are to die for.  And you never feel as though the songs are getting in the way of the story.  In fact, everything you see and hear is in service of the storytelling, which is what Disney does best. It’s fantastic to have a sizeable live orchestra playing the melodious, atmospheric score, under the baton of MD Jonathan Gill. It’s not every production that can afford such extravagance.

You can be as cynical as you like about the Disney money-making machine throwing money at the stage to make more money, but it’s the material that makes the show a classic.  Chiefly the score by Alan Menken and the lyrics by the late Howard Ashman.  This pair also created Little Shop Of Horrors, and brought their musical theatre sensibilities to the animated film.  Therefore it’s a good fit for a stage adaptation, rather than being a story with some songs bunged in.  There is a message about not judging by appearances but this is never forced or overemphasised.

The fairy tale magic is in full-force tonight, and it still gets me right in the feels no matter how many times I see it and it’s a real treat to fall under its upgraded spell.  This funny, beautiful, exciting, romantic, spectacular and uplifting production is just what we need.  Like Belle’s beloved books, the show takes us away from our present woes.  I’m afraid it’s a case where five stars don’t seem like nearly enough.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The clock, the pot, and the candlestick: Nigel Richards, Sam Bailey, and Gavin Lee (Photo: Johan Persson © Disney

Party Piece

GREASE

Birmingham Hippodrome, Monday 29^th May, 2017

 

When it was first staged in the 1970s, the show was a nostalgic look-back at supposedly simpler times.  The film version, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John as positively geriatric teenagers, became a phenomenal global hit, still highly popular, and giving the stage show a new lease of life that shows no signs of failing.  Inevitably, with the film so fixed in the popular consciousness, there are audience expectations that director David Gilmore must meet.  We know how Grease should be done.  Or we think we do.  Some of the songs don’t appear at the same points in the story as they do in the screenplay.  Other numbers, only background music in the film, are given centre stage here.  Conversely, what appears in the film but not in the show, has been interpolated here: chiefly, the opening number by songwriter supremo, Barry Gibb.

Plotwise, it couldn’t be simpler.  Boy meets girl but they’re in different groups at high school, where peer pressure is irresistible… Who will change to overcome the cultural divide?

Frankly, the T-Birds, all leather jackets and DA haircuts, come across as a bunch of twats.  Danny (Tom Parker) feels obliged to deny his feelings for Sandy (Danielle Hope) in order to keep in with his laddish mates.  For her part, Sandy is too straitlaced to be fully integrated into the girls’ gang, the Pink Ladies.  Parker, former member of boyband The Wanted, sings competently; his real strength is in the physical comedy of his portrayal.  Hope is suitably prim as Sandy, her singing voice rich and with a more mature sound than her girlfriends.

Louisa Lytton is a brassy Rizzo.  She gets the ‘dramatic’ moments when a pregnancy scare allows her to belt out There Are Worse Things I Could Do.  Like Danny, she is hampered by her public image.  Revealing her true self would be a sign of weakness.  And so, the show is about the pressures on teens to conform – with whatever group they wish to be part of.   Also, Frenchy (a vivacious Rhiannon Chesterman) feels she can’t tell her friends she has flunked out of beauty school, while her would-be suitor Doody (Ryan Heenan) is physically incapable of stringing the words together to ask her to the dance.

Heenan stands out among the T-Birds as the likeable, little one.  He gets a couple of solo moments, showcasing his talents.

Greased Lightning is a big production number with Tom Senior’s Kenickie cranked up to 11.  It’s loud and brash, laddism writ large.  It’s like being beaten up by a song.

Treat of the night comes from a cameo appearance by ‘Little’ Jimmy Osmond himself as a somewhat superannuated Teen Angel.  Pure showbiz royalty, Osmond knows when to milk it, knows when to be cheesy – how dairy!  His song brings the house down and such is his charisma and the fact that IT’S JIMMY OSMOND, we hardly notice the showgirls swanning around in true Las Vegas style.

The energetic ensemble generates a lot of heat.  Arlene Phillips’s choreography is flashy and fun, adding to the infectious quality of the show.  People are here to have a good time.  This audience doesn’t need warming up.  It’s a party of a show, a guaranteed good time and a chance to escape from whatever it is you might want to escape from.  Cosy and safe, Grease is a reliable crowd-pleaser – and there’s nothing wrong with that.

You’re the one from The Wanted, oo-oo ooh. Tom Parker and Danielle Hope