The Young Company cast and Amelia Kinu Muus in Beauty and The Beast at the Rose Theatre, Kingston. Picture: The Other Richard
Beauty and The Beast continues at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 2 January 2022.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
To craft and create a show that holds equal appeal to every age from eight to 80 requires a special talent and Ciaran McConville’s re-imagining of this famed 18th century French folk tale ticks all the boxes at every level.
Not only is his Beauty and The Beast exceptionally well written but McConville’s longtime collaborator Eamonn O’Dwyer has seamlessly worked in five songs of the highest quality in this delightful play with music.
He is fortunate to have the soaringly gorgeous voice of Amelia Kinu Muus in the lead role of Bella to perform ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’ and lead the enormous company – 46 Young Company students, 23 per performance, plus five professionals – in ‘Underneath the Stars’ and ‘What Matters’, the two which gloriously wrap up each act.
The McConville-O’Dwyer team are old hands at Rose Christmas shows – this the author’s sixth and would have been seventh if Covid hadn’t interfered last year.
The show has arrived a year late but the wait was well worth it. I’ve reviewed most of their work at the Rose and this is without doubt the best I’ve seen.
It helps that it has been my favourite fairy tale ever since I saw the French movie La Belle et la Bête in my teens and McConville’s topically modern update doesn’t veer over-much from the original theme of a prince turned into a disintegrating hulk because of his meanness and can only revert to his old handsome self when he finds a beautiful young lady to love.
In McConville’s version the prince is cursed by the natural world he has failed to respect and there’s another character, Bella’s father Francesco (Oliver Senton, perfect) slowly being poisoned to death from a rose-prick because he has put wealth and self-aggrandisement above caring for his dying wife.
Bella’s story is told by three modern-day siblings with vivid imaginations. When she learns of her father’s illness she sets off on an extraordinary journey to find a cure, meeting white ghosts, recognising the Latin names of flowers she knew by heart from her love of nature and winning hearts along the way until she reaches her destination. The Amor Vincit rose (Love Conquers) she has picked does the rest, Francesco and The Beast get their hands back – Stanton Wright, now grunt-free and back to his handsome best, brushes up well – and they all live happily ever after.
Well, maybe not all because Felice, the self-appointed Guardian of the Forest, has told her money-grubbing guardians (brilliantly played by Daniel Goode and Paula James with a comic-relief nod to those Thénardier rogues in Les Misérables) to “bog off”. That is as close as we get to a swear word in a flowing script that doesn’t need a cheap laugh.
Felice is confidently played by Young Company member Amy Lawrence while Georgia Anderson as Jay, the Scottish bird who “hates being pigeon-holed”, is another youngster given plenty to say and doing so eye-catchingly that she looks ready to climb the next step on the precarious ladder to stage success.
But every member of the Group Company ensemble from little Alexander Forster upwards does him/herself proud, a tribute to director Lucy Morrell and her troops, with set designer Frankie Bradshaw (sensational giant flowers) and costumier Peter Todd (loved Beast’s embroidered waistcoat and floral banyan robe) worthy of special mention.
Songwriter and MD O’Dwyer handles all things musical with his usual aplomb in an enchanting production that held me rapt from start to finish, the only fault I could find being the omission, not for the first time, of a song list and who sang them in a £5 programme.
Jeremy Chapman
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