As a hush falls over Manchester's Palace Theatre, the warm, familiar tones of Angela Lansbury introduces the audience to the story of Beauty and the Beast. Fans of the hit 1991 animated movie will immediately recognise her voice as the original Mrs Potts, and wraps those of us who grew up with the film in a blanket of snuggly nostalgia.
The "tale as old as time" is here in Manchester for an epic 10-week run, and from the amount of young children dressed up in Belle's famous yellow dress swishing through the theatre aisles, it is clearly a movie that continues to enchant. The story is that of young book-loving Belle dreaming of "more than this provincial life", before her world changes forever with the fateful discovery that her father Maurice has been entrapped by a "Beast" inside a magical mansion.
Little does she know that the whole house is under a spell, cast because of the house master's youthful arrogance to an old beggar woman. Unaware of her magical powers, she transformed him into the Beast until he truly learns to see the beauty within.
