This is not Beauty or the Beast as we know them: Belle is an aspiring artist who has no time for love and the Beast, before his transformation, wants to be a singer. They convene with other wannabes at a theatrical talent show in hope to become the next big thing and seem to be getting somewhere until a jealous magician begins performing his dark arts.
It is always refreshing to have a new take on an old story but Andrew Pollard’s “theatrical reframing” is lumbering in its plotline and too obvious in its imagination: because we are in Paris there is a flower-seller in a beret and Dame Sarah Sew-n-Sew wears a dress made of baguettes, while there is a lacklustre rendition of Bros’s When Will I Be Famous? by the fame-hungry characters.
