Beauty and the Beast – Palace Theatre, Manchester and Touring

Picture: Johan Persson

Beauty and the Beast runs at the Palace Theatre, Manchester until 4 June 2022 and then tours the UK until 8 January 2023 (including a run at the London Palladium from 24 June to 17 September 2022).

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

It’s a tale almost as old as time. Disney Theatrical Productions takes one of the studio’s already beloved animated classics, adapts it for the stage and then sits back and waits for audiences – and the big bucks – to come flooding in.

It’s not always worked. Ask Tarzan, who swung into Broadway to not much acclaim in 2006 before sheepishly exiting – loincloth in hand – after just over a year. But when the stars align – as they did with the West End transfers of Aladdin in 2016 and Frozen in 2021 – it’s the closest thing producers can get to a sure-fire musical theatre hit.

But it all started with Beauty and the Beast, which opened on Broadway in 1994 in a production featuring new songs from composer Alan Menken and Tim Rice (following original lyricist Howard Ashman’s death in 1991 during production of the animated film).

That original production went rather unloved by critics but audiences flocked to it and while, in the years since, it hasn’t changed the theatre firmament like, or been as universally lauded as, Disney’s biggest, most enduring theatrical beast The Lion King, it now ranks as the tenth longest-running musical in Broadway history and set the template – for better or worse – for all the Disney stage musical adaptations to come.

But at this stage, there are only two things that audiences coming afresh to this redesigned and reimagined new production – which started its UK tour last year and visits London’s Palladium this summer – will want to know. And that’s whether it successfully brings the film they already know and love faithfully to life and – fundamentally – if it’s worth shelling out for the inflated ticket prices for the whole family to see it

The answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes. The production’s much vaunted illusions, designed by Jim Steinmeyer, are truly breath-taking, ranging from simple tricks like the beaming, seemingly bodiless head of young cup Chip (winningly played, on this occasion, by Rojae Simpson) to the truly miraculous climatic transformation of the Beast.

Stanley A Meyer’s set, Ann Hould-Ward’s costumes and David H Lawrence’s hair and make-up similarly hit the mark, making the cast look like animation cells brought convincingly to life, even – in the case of Belle’s iconic yellow dress – evoking audible gasps of delight.

Tonally, things are even more cartoonish than the cartoon, but director and choreographer Matt West’s well-paced, clearly mounted production remains true to the spirit of the original film, probably more so than the murkily rendered, CGI-saturated live action 2017 film.

The additional songs still feel slightly like filler in the first half, but Menken’s added instrumental pieces – lushly orchestrated by Danny Troob and arranged by Michael Kosarin – give the production a high-quality Hollywood sheen and help propel the action along.

Of the additional songs, ‘A Change in Me’ – added for Toni Braxton when she joined the Broadway cast in 1998 – gives a chance for Courtney Stapleton’s bright-eyed and likeable (if a little CBeebies-ish) Belle to vocally shine. Shaq Taylor also benefits from the extra time given to his Beast, adding welcome notes of anguish and vulnerability to the role, even if his big number, ‘If I Can’t Love Her’, isn’t quite as good as ‘Evermore’, the song Menken and Rice added to the live action version.

In a mega-production like this, where everything is turned up to 11, some subtleties can inevitably be lost. But cleaving so closely to the original means that the story beats in Linda Woolverton’s book – adapted from her own screenplay – are clear and the production never loses sight of what the emotional stakes are for all of its characters.

This is particularly true of Lumiere and his fellow household-staff-turned-household-objects. Their fear and bewilderment at the prospect of fully turning into inanimate objects is more marked and keenly felt on stage, possibly because the characters are played by visibly living, breathing actors, adding real urgency to the need for their master to find true love.

Central to this is Gavin Lee’s attention-grabbing performance as Lumiere. Lee lights up the stage – both figuratively and, of course, literally – whenever he’s around, although he is well-matched comedically by assured turns from Nigel Richards as fussy carriage clock Cogsworth and Samantha Bingley as the vivaciously expressive French dresser Madame.

Lee’s presence has encouraged the already eye-poppingly, show-stopping Busby Berkeley-like dance sequences of ‘Be Our Guest’ to be extended further with extra tap dancing. But, like the first half’s other standout, extended ensemble number, ‘Gaston’ – entertainingly performed by Tom Senior as Belle’s delightfully deplorable suitor and the whole supporting cast – it proves that you can sometimes have slightly too much of a good thing.

But it’s all in keeping with the ‘more is more’ approach of a production that certainly couldn’t be accused of short-changing its already thoroughly satiated and satisfied audience members.

Chris Bartlett