Beauty and the Beast

Home Truths

Beauty and the Beast

by Alan McHugh, additional material by Pete Firman

Crosswords Pantomimes at Richmond Theatre until 5^th January

Review by Mark Aspen

Take an old story, preferably one with a beautiful heroine and a handsome hero, and a big bad villain, add lots of colour, lots of music, a dash of slapstick and plenty of jokes, and you have a pantomime.  Then you need a dame and a name, a hapless comic for our sympathy (ahHr!) and a fairy spirit for our mystery (ooH!) and you have a traditional pantomime.  Add in more music, more colour, lots of lights and bangs and flashes, and great dance and special effects and you have a Crossroads pantomime.

Beauty and the Beast is an old story, put together in 1740, from very old stories, by a pair of French ladies-who-lunch at the royal court (no, not the theatre) to amuse the Sun King.  But, as we know, it is “a tale as old as time”.

Our heroine is Belle, poor, pretty, and popular, liked by all in the village, who is guided by honesty, truth and kindness as her paramount principles.  Belle is played by newcomer Hope Dawe in her second professional engagement since drama school this year.  She is a remarkably confident performer, playing Belle with sweet charm and fearless directness.  And she dances and sings beautifully.   

The Beast is our hero, or maybe anti-hero, since he is Prince Sebastian condemned to this bestial appearance as punishment for getting uppity and being beastly to all and sundry, especially an “old beggar woman” who visits the palace grounds with a rose.  The curse remains until he can love and become loved before the rose’s last petal falls.  This backstory is told to us up-front, from behind a gauze.  (A process known as a spoiler if it is done in a review.  Spoiler alert: don’t read these last 52 words.)   Luke McCall makes a very dignified Beast, played straight.  In the West End musicals, he has played the Phantom (Phantom of the Opera) and Jean Valjean (Les Miserables), so as one might expect has a strong high- baritone singing voice, rich and powerful.  His “This could be love” delivers the turning point in his redemption. 

The baddie of the piece is Flash Harry.  Jason Leigh Winter doesn’t underplay the villainy of the character, and he knows how to flex the pex, and sex-up the biceps.  Winter’s Flash Harry commands the stage as the poseur they all love to hate … and with some great eyebrow acting!  Flash vies for Belle’s attention, but with a marked lack of finesse.

Our dame is Betty Bouffant, Belle’s mother, dressed in an exaggerated extravaganza of flowery frocks and with colourful coiffure.  After fourteen years as an ugly sister, Ben Stock is flying solo this time, and clearly enjoying it, not wasting a moment to camp up the character.   The Dame doesn’t hog all the risqué jokes though, they are fairly well scattered, but all thankfully subtle (there’s that penny-dropping moment); for with today’s knowing children, going under the radar needs some pretty low flying!  Moreover, the political jokes would have a fairly wide backing.  The riposte to Belle’s rhetorical question “Where would we be if we all told lies?” is “Westminster”.  And a brief black-out as part of the action elicited that the producers didn’t get their Winter Fuel Allowance.

The Name in this panto is Dame (in the non-panto sense) Maureen Lipman, who as an actress, writer and comedienne is probably now one of our most prolific and long-standing names.   She plays Mrs Potty, the housekeeper to the beast-prince in his castle.  Experience is useful in panto, as Dame Maureen knows how to quip and ad-lib, as things don’t always go smoothly.  It’s that audience answering back.  She makes the customary grand entrance: in a veteran (no pun intended) car, that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the London to Brighton run last month … well, Ok, it would.  She has great fun with Mrs Potty teaching her son how to woo Belle, with the “chat-up chit-chat”. 

Mrs Potty’s name is not what you’re thinking.  She has been turned into a tea-pot as part of the spell on her master.  Two of the dance ensemble are a candlestick and a clock (a slight nod towards another manifestation of Beauty and the Beast.)   The teapot is the creation of Ron Briggs, but pantos are always a good excuse for costumiers to let rip; and, with Mike Coltman’s speciality additions, costume designer Teresa Nalton has gone to town.  The all-gold royal wedding costumes are splendid and Belle’s pannier ball gown is gorgeous.

Mrs Potty’s son is Silly Billy (because he’s a little Potty?), the hapless comic lead.  He has strong competition in wooing Belle, after the reformed prince and the un-reformable Flash Harry.  Belle’s criteria for a man are to be “funny, kind, and sexy”.   Silly Billy is undoubtedly funny, and selflessly kind, but … !   Billy is faithful and loving and a general good egg, but he does have one fault.  He has been known to tell a fib, a shortcoming for which he has to submit to the Trunk of Truth.   It is a sort of strip-poker lie-detector, and in the end we see … shall we say that if he were a Scotsman, we would find out the answer to the age-old question.

As Silly Billy, Pete Firman is the stand-out performer in Beauty and the Beast.  Apart from contributing towards the scriptwriting, on stage he motors the show with indefatigable and irrepressible energy, not only with sharp and bright comedy, but as a consummate stage conjurer.   The star magic trick even involves transfer a gold wedding ring from one audience member to another.   Yet, sitting on the edge of the stage, his comedy is given a foil of pathos, as he sings about the nature of (unrequited) love and breaks the string of a floating red balloon, bit by bit.  But, when he stands the string is intact.

While the core of his act is the zip-along comedy, things do always go right.  On press night there were three hiccoughs, all dealt with brilliantly.   Silly Billy’s method for finding out the time of the night in the wee small hours is by loudly playing a trombone sequestered in his blankets.  Irate neighbours can be rather useful.  But what happens if the instrument comes apart at 3:30am.    At another point, with Betty Bouffant and Mrs Potty, a panto-standard alliteration marathon had a meltdown, but all three dealt with it with aplomb.  These moments are unscripted (of course, maybe, possibly), but what is not possible to script is the spontaneity of four children brought ad-hoc onto the forestage to take part.  For risk-taking panto performers, this can work smoothly, but what if the youngest is shy and the oldest stroppy?   Firman handled this brilliantly, and the end when only the shy one was left he gave her the red balloon, and she wandered off looking like something from a Banksy mural. 

And then there’s the fairy spirit, here The Enchantress, who is the “old beggar woman” at the start.  The Beast’s death, on the end of Flash Harry’s sword, is most moving in McCall and Dawe’s hands, when Belle declares her love for him.  The spell is broken and The Enchantress can resurrect The Beast as the handsome wholesome Prince Sebastian.   The Enchantress is played by another newcomer, Cherece Roberts, who enchants and amazes with her lush singing voice in “A tale as old as time”.

The ensemble of six dancers, under dance captain Ethan Atkinson, are a skilled presence throughout the show and choreographer Jenny Thomas, fresh from Strictly, has created some memorable sequences.  The ghosts flitting around the haunted bedroom and the soon to follow attack of the wolves, with the red-eyed creatures of fright enhanced by puppetry, are the prime examples.

Musical director Pierce Tee on keyboard and his half dozen musicians produce a glittering, ebullient wealth of versatile and energetic music.   Further soundscape has been created by sound designer Nick Sagar.  As a small niggle though, sometimes the voice and music are out of balance, the music and sound overwhelming the words of the singers’ lyrics.   

Visually there are striking scenes, the snowfall at the end of the first half; and the recurring skyscape of the globe of the earth like a NASA image from space.  Lighting designer Tim Oliver’s power consumption to create his iridescent scenes, the flashes, snaps and other effects, frequently augmented with the obligatory pantomime pyrotechnics, would keep a small town going.

Director, Paul Robinson, in presenting “the spellbinding pantomime” has given us the full works in Beauty and the Beast.   It is a traditional pantomime, but with the Crossroads make-over, plus magic galore, a fun retelling of the tale as old as panto-time.

Mark Aspen, December 2024

Photography by Danny Kaan