Fresh from its West End run at the Dominion Theatre where it won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical in 1998, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is currently embarking on its first UK tour.

The delightful tale of Beauty and the Beast hardly needs any introduction. As Disney’s first musical production on stage, it doesn’t get any magical than this. A selfish and loveless prince is cursed by an enchantress and becomes a monstrous beast (Alistair Robins). His loyal subjects serving him slowly take the form of various objects like a mantle clock (Cogsworth), a candelabra (Lumiere) and a teapot (Mrs Potts) to name a few. The Beast must learn to love and be loved in return before the last petal of the Enchanted Rose falls and all of them are doomed to remain in their non-human forms forever.

Cue the entry of Belle (Annalene Beechley) who agrees to take her father’s place as the Beast’s prisoner after her father had been caught trespassing in his castle. Naturally, with time, the Beast learns to be gentle, they fall in love with each other, the spell is broken (just as the last petal of the Enchanted Rose visibly falls on stage) and everyone lives happily ever after. (Except perhaps for the self-obsessed and jealous Gaston who falls off a cliff in the final fight with the Beast, presumably to his death for the adults watching.)

Throughout the musical, Belle goes on a roller coaster ride of emotions (best reflected in ‘Home’) while the Beast’s heart-wrenching ‘If I Can’t Love Her’ is another notable addition to Alan Menken’s magnificent score which was lengthened for the stage adaptation of the classic feature cartoon. The sets are sumptuous, the costumes are lavish and the ‘Be My Guest’ scene is a spectacle of dancing cutlery and crockery to behold, without being overbearingly so. 37 special effects and 11 magic tricks are used in the production and one simply has to see it to believe it. The transformation scene at the end has the Beast elevated into the air from his supine position and rotated amidst flashing lights. Half a second of darkness later, the prince sans 1.5 hours worth of make-up takes the place of the hideous beast. These are some of the many individual sections that are excellent, but as a whole, the musical comes out more than the sum of its parts.

There is a strong sense of déjà vu during the final scene between the villagers and the denizens of the castle where it is reminiscent of The Lion King’s final battle scene with Scar and the hyenas but unlike this other over-hyped Disney musical, Beauty and the Beast comes across as being more genuine and boasts of a more memorable soundtrack. It is unfortunate that this gem of a musical is no longer in the West End.

 4 Stars

 (Reviewed for The Beaver, LSE in March 2002)