Beauty and the Beast changed Broadway for ever.
The 1994 stage musical – an adaptation of the hit 1991 animated movie, based on Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s fairytale – was Disney Theatrical Productions’ (DTP) first full-length stage show.
The collective response to the film had marvelled at the integrity of its musical storytelling; New York Times sent theatre critic Frank Rich to review the movie, who called it, “The best Broadway musical score of 1991”. Transferring it to actual Broadway seemed like a logical move, albeit a risky one – but after some hesitation, Disney took the plunge.
Disney created DTP, bought the dilapidated New Amsterdam theatre on 42nd Street and facilitated, for better or worse, the tourist-friendly clean-up of once gritty Times Square. The theatre required extensive restoration and it wasn’t ready in time for Beauty and the Beast, but became the first home of the Lion King on Broadway, which is still open (now in a different theatre) and currently ranked as its third-longest running musical.
DTP is now a Broadway force, nominated for 62 Tony Awards and winning 20. But what of the story that started it all? Does it have anything left to offer on stage?
Absolutely. The musical’s original creative team, including director/choreographer Matt West, have returned to refresh and expand the production, smoothing out its dated effects and perking up its book, look, and feel.
Stanley A Meyer’s scenic design is all storybook charm with a touch of rococo, a pastoral playfulness united by Alan Menken’s music with its gorgeous orchestration and full-bodied fantasy. The music also eases the transition between Howard Ashman’s original lyrics and Tim Rice’s additions, which are more bluntly comic and direct. Buoyed up by the score, the new Australian cast glides through the story (the book is by Linda Woolverton, who penned the film script).
Shubshri Kandiah plays her third princess here as Belle (previously she starred as Princess Jasmine in the Australian tour of Aladdin, and she’s played Cinderella twice in as many years, first the Rodgers and Hammerstein version for Opera Australia and then Sondheim’s more ambivalent Cinderella in Belvoir’s Into the Woods), and this is her best fit yet: she moves effortlessly, effervescently, from a bookish dreamy loner into someone who is finally able to connect with others.
Brendan Xavier is the Beast (he recently took over the Kristoff role in the Australian tour of Frozen), and they’re an excellent pair. While his character swings between the broadly silly-but-sweet and the surprisingly dark (If I Can’t Love Her, the Menken-Rice number penned for the stage, is a deeply serious cri de cœur that closes the first act), the two approaches finally arrive at something that feels real.
This cast is committed, refreshingly, to character. Understudy Jackson Head played the role of Gaston on opening night, and the part felt firmly realised, finding a goofier edge to the chauvinist villain. As Lumière, Cogsworth and Mrs Potts – the Beast’s household staff transformed into objects – Rohan Browne, Gareth Jacobs, and Jayde Westaby are instantly lovable; you understand precisely why Belle opens her heart to them. Alana Tranter’s Madame is an essential comic addition, and Hayley Martin puts her dance chops on full display as maid turned feather-duster Babette, who along with Browne nearly runs off with the show in the sumptuous Be Our Guest, now a feast of Busby Berkeley-style shape-making, tap, and full ensemble spectacle.
But it is the show’s love story, and its journey of its two central characters to find, feel, and express their love for each other, that soars above everything else and settles in the heart. Menken’s music (the musical direction here is by Luke Hunter), with its blossoming refrains and reprises, guides the characters to each other through melody. Their growing connection, and the Beast’s attempts to recommit to and rediscover his humanity, are sincerely moving.
Of course the biggest gift to the story – and the biggest gift to us – has always been the lyrics of Howard Ashman.
When Ashman began working on Beauty and the Beast, he was already sick. Disney set up a production unit near his home in New York so he could continue to work while receiving care for HIV/Aids. He died eight months before the film was released, and his music contains a glimpse at what musical theatre might have looked like and how it might have evolved had he lived: classical, beautiful phrasing paired with literary lyrics driven by emotion, favouring clarity over cleverness but always in possession of real intelligence.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the devastating, hopeful, eternal nature of the title song, which might be one of the greatest love poems ever told by a kindly teapot. Through Beauty and the Beast, Ashman gave Mrs Potts the truth of the entire story, and maybe the truth of everything, too. It says love is a lasting, powerful force – bigger than us, but also deeply human, full of quirks and flaws and losses and joys.
Ashman, and this musical, leave us with a reminder that love endures everywhere, all the time, even when we think it may be lost to us. It’s there ever just the same. Ever a surprise.
Beauty and the Beast runs at Sydney’s Capitol theatre until 5 November
