Beauty And The Beast
- A Musical Pantomime
The
Review by Emma Shane
© December 2004
There were times when I
wondered whether it would be worth travelling all the way down to
The next scene finds us in The
Square Of Honeypot Village, just as Beauty, played by Cassidy Janson,
enters with a pile of books she has bought. Also present are a chorus of girls,
both Gypsies and School Children (lead by a young woman in a teacher’s gown and
mortar board), are singing and dancing. Beauty leading them in a song about her
books. Brown-haired Cassidy looks attractive (yes a beauty), and sings
nicely. Enter two young men, namely
Simple Simon, played by Mark Osmand, and the very handsome Anton, played
by Darren Bennett. Most of the Gypsy ladies are crazy for Anton,
however, the one girl who really attracts him, is of course Beauty, but she’s
not interested in him. They sing and dance a duet together. Yes, last I get to
see a bit of Darren Bennett’s dancing. This sequence put me very much in
mind of those good old
We find Beauty’s father,
played by children’s television veteran Brian Cant, in his workshop,
with his Balloonamatic III. It is supposed to increase the size of balloons that have already blown up by hand.
However, when he tries it, all it does is send the balloons whizzing out into
the audience. I found it one of the funnier pieces of slapstick in this
pantomime. I don’t often like slapstick, but I enjoyed that. Alfredo decides
that perhaps he should nail down the balloons, and picks up his hammer to do
so, but there seems to be some kind of an echo. He starts asking the hammer
what it is doing, before finally realising that his daughter has returned home
and wants to come in. However, he still can’t stop trying to talk to his
hammer. Brian Cant makes a fine job of portraying a slightly confused
old man, and his presence among the cast, adds interest for the grown ups in
the audience, as I’m sure a good number of us remember seeing him on television
when we were children. Back to the show, Beauty has been rather disturbed by
Anton’s behaviour towards her, for she’s too young to yet be sure if she knows
what love is. Her father comforts her by telling her to Ac-centu-ate The
Positive, which they then proceed to sing together. They sang this
quite pleasantly, however, for those of us familiar with the Hot Shoe
Shuffle British Cast Album, it didn’t sound quite right. But that’s
only because of being accustomed to such a particularly fine version of the
song, especially with the knowledge that several people involved in that
musical are also involved with this pantomime, including the lady who sang that
song so uniquely on that album. Some singers have a talent for being able to
make any song they sing so much their own, that after hearing them sing it, it
is very hard to hear someone else that song without feeling that it doesn’t
sound quite right. Back to the plot, and Beauty is going off into the forest to
look for wood for the furnace.
In The Haunted Forest,
The Sorceress and a group of smelly Trogs (played by the Junior Chorus), are
clustered round a cauldron. Although she appeared in the first scene, this is
really the one where Louise Plowright gets to really establish and make
something of her character, and given her strengths as an actress, is makes
sense to give her an opportunity to do so. The Sorceress comes across as a
commanding efficient kind of figure, who is pretty determined to have things
her own way. She is rather like a severe school-mistress, or a woman at the
head of a business. And when she exclaimed to the Trogs “I don’t know why I
keep Trogs”, her manner was very reminiscent of the scene in Mamma
Mia when Donna The Dynamo said “Pepper and Eddie are my bar staff
and general help, only generally they’re no help at all”, it had a similar
air of being resigned, or not, to her lot. Being a pantomime, there is of
course quite an emphasis on the fact that the story is being acted out in front
of an audience, so it is necessary to include some jokes directed straight at
the audience, and we have one here, when The Sorceress tells “You lot”,
the children in the audience, if they don’t behave “I’ll send you all to
Grange Hill”. Unfortunately the joke fell a bit flat, mainly, I think
because a lot of the audience didn’t seem to have read the programme notes, and
therefore didn’t realise that Louise is soon to be seen semi-regular in that
long-running children’s drama. Back to the plot, and The Sorceress realising
Beauty, wandering the forest may be about to come upon the castle, and could
break the curse, decides to take no chances, and sends a Trog to intercept her.
Outside the castle we meet
the Dame, Mrs Potty, played by Chris Hayward. Somehow, beacause of the
curse the sorceress put on the castle, Mrs Potty keeps changing into different
things, at this particular point the Dame is riding in the laundry basket,
supposedly on a friend’s back. In fact I think Chris is wearing a costume that
includes both the basket and the friend’s head. At The Castle, Mrs Potty is Chief
Cook And Bottle Washer. I couldn’t help noticing that this classic Kander
and Ebb song had, in good old pantomime tradition, very much rewritten many
of the late Fred Ebb’s great lyrics. But nevertheless it is a very
enjoyable version of this number, and The Rink, the show from
which it comes, isn’t performed very often (because some people, mentioning no
names, think the roller-skating could present problems). So it’s great to give
the song an airing, and introduce it to a new audience. It’s also very nicely
performed by The Dame, and the Juvenile Chorus, armed with scrubbing cloths. As
the dame exits, on comes Beauty wandering in the forest, she’s almost got
enough wood, just a little bit more, but she’s dangerously close to the castle.
At this point she certainly encountered the Trogs, and I don’t quite remember
whether she encountered The Sorceress as well. But there was certainly a scene,
and it might well have been here, where The Sorceress says to someone, who has
not yet been to the castle, that in the castle there lives a Prince who hasn’t
been seen for many years, keeps himself to himself “You know what these
Royals are like”, she speaks this line with a very silky voice, not a trace
of her own northern (possibly Lancashire) tones (which she uses in most of this
pantomime, and all of Mamma Mia), and yet it sounded vaguely
familiar. (In fact it fact it reminded me a bit of the speaking voice of a
certain Diva, whom I saw in a show, up the line, in Southampton a couple of
years ago). Back to the plot, suddenly The Beast appears, looking all the more
frightening with his cloak on. Beauty falls down in a faint, the other
characters fade away, as the scene changes.
Beauty comes to her senses in
The Throne Room of the castle, which seems to be empty
save for an animatronic mouse (whose voice and performance do not seem to have
a credit in the programme (I wonder whether it could have been Mark Osmond,
since he seems to have a lot of voice-over credits in his resume). With Beauty
conscious The Beast enters, this time without his cloak, but she faints again
at his scary appearance. The Beast expresses his problems in song, an Andrew
Lloyd Webber song from Sunset Boulevard (I think it was Everything’s
As If We Never Said Goodbye), only with drastically rewritten lyrics.
On cue Beauty comes round again, and now she’s got used to him she isn’t scared
by The Beast’s appearance any more.
Meanwhile down in The
Castle Kitchens who should enter but Alfredo looking for his daughter.
Mrs Potty, now dressed in a Fairy Liquid bottle, tells him that Beauty is
with The Prince, and they can’t be disturbed, so Alfredo helps Mrs Potty
with a cake she is making. This is the pantomimes major slapstick scene. Not
one of my personal favourites, because I’m not all that enamoured of slapstick.
The joke with the chicken seemed a bit odd to me, as how can you have a chicken
that is both “a battery hen” and “organ-ic”, I also wasn’t sure
about spraying the audience with water-pistols (even though it wasn’t all that
much water). However it was lovely to see how well Brian Cant played it,
his best performed scene in the entire show. The years simply fell away, as he
got right into it, and gave it everything, like the children’s television
legend that he is. At the end of the scene the table is pushed away, and the
middle curtain rises.
At the back of the stage
sitting on steps in The Castle Ballroom is Beauty, singing Somewhere
That’s Green (from Little Shop Of Horrors, but with
rewritten lyrics) about how she and The Beast aren’t really all that different.
Again Cassidy has a good singing voice, and just about manages, to meet the
high performance standards set by some of the other members of the company. As
she sings, the steps slide forward to the front of the stage (giving the
stage-hands an opportunity to clean up further back without being seen), and as
the number concludes, are pulled down on a platform at the front of the stage
(the one The Prince and The Sorceress rose up on at the start).
Now we’re back in The
Throne Room, where The Beast is wondering whether he can possibly make
Beauty love him. She enters, and they sing a song about how everything changes
when they are close together. I know this song had, as usually had its lyrics
rewritten, and I wasn’t too sure what it actually was, although I think it may
well have been another Andrew Lloyd-Webber number.
There’s just one important
member of the company whom we haven’t yet heard sing, but perhaps its a good
idea to save the best till last, or at least to close the first act. In The
Sorceress’s Lair, we find The Sorceresses and her Trogs. I could also
see two flying-wires obviously attached to her costume, so I guess she’ll end
this scene flying, which of course she does. After revealing that she’s seen
how Beauty and The Beast are getting on together, she announces that
she’s decided to change the plot, The Beast must die, Don’t Rain
On My Parade, with altered lyrics proclaiming There’s Never Going To
Be A Happy Ending Now. I found that although I didn’t initially recognise
the song (because of the altered lyrics) I can’t get the tune out of my head.
Although by Jule Styne, it has a pop-song like sound to it (perhaps because it
was originally written for Barbara Streisand). Well if you’re going to
put a song with that sort of style into a panto, then it makes sense to give it
to someone who will sing it well. And here we have the best el rock-chick
supremo to grace the wonderful world of
Act 2 opens Outside The Castle, with The Dame
dressed as a tap dancing Tea Cup, with the song Anything Goes,
soon joined by a Senior Chorus of plates, and finally joined by a Juvenile
Chorus of biscuits. Personally I didn’t much like Chris Hayward’s
rendition of the song itself. However, that is only because I am very fussy
about how I like to hear certain Cole Porter songs (of which that is
one), and truly there is only one person in the company of this pantomime who I
think would have stood a cat in hells chance of singing this song in a way that
I might actually have liked. So the fact that I personally didn’t much care for
Chris’s singing is no reflection on his performance. If you’re not as fussy as
I am about this song, then I’m sure you’d enjoy his version of it. That said, I
did appreciate the alterations to the lyrics, and I very much enjoyed seeing
how well this number was danced. For me, it was the tap dancing that actually
made the number. I do like watching good tap dancing. It is also worth noting
how good Chris Hayward’s legs are. With legs like that he’d be worthy of
The Mark Morris Dance Group. On looks alone he could be quite convincing
in drag, though his voice is a giveaway.
On to a number where I did
enjoy the singing. In The Haunted Forrest The Sorceress, who has just
entered subtly down the stairs to the audiences left, cannot comprehend why
Beauty seems to be falling for The Beast, why nowadays don’t nice young girls like
Beauty go for handsome men? She expresses this puzzlement in song, a number, (The
Legend Of) Miss Baltimore Crabs (form Hairspray) with rewritten lyrics, this seemed to be a mixture
of a pop influence combined with a hot jazzy one. Just the perfect combination
of a number for that dynamo Louise Plowright, with her good dark
powerful voice, to rip through like a vamp needing a man. She starts this
number with her dancing, you might think that with Darren Bennett and Chris
Hayward around that wouldn’t be room in the show for another decent dancer,
but while as a dancer she might not be quite in their league, she jolly good
all the same, and its nice to see her getting a chance to be a bit of a dancing
queen. All in all a great number, and one that is rather difficult to
follow, for it almost stopped the show.
In fact this was one moment
in the show where I truly felt there was an unbalanced. As an actress Louise
Plowright usually seems to be very good at keeping the balance of power
wherever its supposed to be. However, even she can’t help ending such a
potential showstopper as that number on a high, and as she exits at the front
of the stage to the audience’s left, Darren Bennett coming on stage with
Mark Osmond and the Senior Chorus coming on stage from the back, had a
hard time getting the audiences attention. It was several moments before the
audience had calmed down sufficiently to concentrate. I felt it would have been
fairer on Darren and Mark to have brought the chorus on first for a few minutes
that then have them enter. Still this is a fast moving pantomime. Now in The
Village Tavern, Alfredo soon turns up to get some
The trio, Alfredo, Anton,
and, Simple Simon are scared in The Haunted Forrest, and start
singing Teddy Bears Picnic to stop themselves being scared, some giant spiders
are dangled down, prompting the classic “It’s behind you”, and a
grandfatherly “Thats very naughty of you” from Brian Cant to the
audience every time they don’t see the spiders. One by one they do and run off,
first Simple Simon, then Anton, and lastly Alfredo. In a classic panto moment
its sometimes hard for the actors to remain convincing, and Darren deserves
singling out for managing to be totally convincing throughout the scene; there
were moments when Brian looked little as if he was going through the motions
(but then Brian is getting on a bit).
In The Castle Kitchen, Mrs Potty has
grown tired of waiting and used brandy in the cake instead. Who should turn up but The Sorceress, she’s
already told us she leaves nothing to chance, and now we learn why, she
is planning to get possession of The Castle, and has evidently decided she
needs to enchant Mrs Potty. She seems to have a certain amount of difficulty in
achieving this, and gets a little frustrated, but it is noticeable that she never
looses her dignity. Every time her attempts at enchanting go wrong her reaction
is a calm “Ok that’s not working” and she tries something else. Her main
trick is to try and hypnotise Mrs Potty, or perhaps put the dame to sleep. At
any rate she is trying to get Mrs Potty to look into her eyes, and says “You’re
feeling sleepy” To which Mrs Potty says “I’m not but the audience is”.
This was, to my mind the least successful joke in the entire pantomime, for the
simple reason that it was totally untrue. I don’t think that anyone in the
audience would have dared to try and fall asleep while watching Louise
Plowright strut her stuff on stage. One just couldn’t cheat her, there’s
too much fire in the soul of her performance for that. With the arrival
of the trio (Alfredo, Anton, and Simple Simon) The Sorceress quickly
disappears, she doesn’t want them finding her, yet. The trio order Mrs Potty to
take them to Beauty. But first she has to add the wine to the cake.
Upstairs in The Castle
Ballroom, Beauty tells The Beast that she can’t love him, because she
doesn’t know what love is, but she does like him very much, a bit disappointed,
he suggests they celebrate their friendship with the cake Mrs Potty has been
baking, this is brought on by the dame, followed by the trio, they’ve come to
rescue Beauty, but she explains she and The Beast are just friends, and she
doesn’t need rescuing. At this point The Beast tastes the cake, and says it
tastes odd. Mrs Potty protests. Suddenly The Sorceress appears, and informs The
Beast that she has poisoned him. Meanwhile, Simple Simon is wondering what on
earth the barmaid from the tavern is doing her, so someone has to explain to
him that she’s actually a sorceress. Nearly everyone seems to depart the stage
at this point, except for Beauty and The Beast. The latter launches into
another Andrew Lloyd-Webber type song, which Matthew Rixon sings
pretty powerfully, he seems to be suited to that particular genre of musical
theatre song. The Beast finally sinks down on some steps, dying. But at this
point, Beauty realising how much she’ll miss The Beast kisses him. She has
fallen in love. Suddenly a flywire pulls The Beast up into the roof, so all we
can see are his legs. Lighting effects spill onto the stage, and when he is let
down he is no longer a beast, but a prince again. The curse is broken.
Outside The Castle its time for more traditional Christmas show fare,
the audience sing-a-long. Out comes Alfredo, followed by Mrs Potty on a
Scooter. Alfredo wants to do When The Saints Go Marching In,
while Mrs Potty favours She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain. So
after running through both, they split the audience in half, Brian on the
audiences left, and Chris on the audiences right, and each side does half. The
dame then departs to try on a dress, leaving Brian to read out various notices
and some birthday greetings.
The finale is in The
Ballroom, everyone comes on in their turn to take their bow, and then
sings the end of the story, with each of the principals, including The
Sorceress taking some individual lines. When they all sing together, it is
Cassidy and most especially Louise whose voices are particularly loud and
clear.
Overall great Christmas fun.
It is a provincial pantomime, I’ve only ever seen suburban professional pantos
before, and this was much more fun, it was a lovely mix of topical celebrity,
and cast-related references (actually I only spotted one of the latter -The Grange
Hill joke - and was surprised there weren’t more), mixed with some
local references. There were a wide variety of songs, to cater both to slightly
different musical tastes, and the abilities of the performers. Matthew Rixon’s
beast seemed to get largely Andrew Lloyd-Webber type stuff, while Darren
Bennett’s Anton had numbers which seemed to illustrate his 1930’s/40’s
dance-film-star style, Chris Hayward’s Mrs Potty had good old-fashioned
show tunes, and Louise Plowright’s sorceress had some pop-rock-jazz type
things that she alone happens to have a certain talent for singing (though I’m
sure she would have done the show tunes well, its just that no one else could
have done the rock/pop style well enough). With such a range of music, it helps
to have it well played, and Simon Gray led the seven-piece orchestra (Andrew
Franks, Pete Shelley, Mike Potts, Huw Jones, Graeme
Lawrence, and, Steve Hayes) very well, as one would expect from
someone who was Guildhall trained and with the variety of experience
listed in his resume. I was a little unhappy with the radio mikes, in some
cases (especially Beauty and Anton) they were far to noticeable visibly and
audible (if radio miking is done well it should not be noticeable to the ear).
In addition this is quite a small theatre, and I’m not too sure if some of
these singers (such as The Beast and The Sorceress) really needed miking
anyway. That said, after a while one sort of got used to the mikes, but should
one have had to? The Juvenile chorus of: Amy Billing, Jessica
Greenham, Chantelle Noory, Amy Owen, Jessica Owen, Ambert
Porter, Charlotte Reid, Courtnay Rowan, Amelia Shawdon,
Isabella Sedgwick, Olivia Taylor, Kari Thompson, Megan
Travers, Cari Wakeford, and, Amy Wilson, were good as the
towns children, and seemed to do well as The Trogs (I say “seemed” on
this last point, because The Sorceress was quite rightly the major feature of
most of those scenes). Meanwhile the
Senior Chorus of: Keely Campbell, Chloe Coulter, Samantha
Cummings, Natalie Evans, Kim Holder, Michelle Holland,
Kate Hurley, Natalie Khoshnevis, Beth Kingston, Alexandria
Reidcliffe, and Sarah Russell. Were truly excellent as the tap
dancing plates (they rather made that Anything Goes number), and
splendid as the Gypsies backing Darren Bennett’s numbers.
All the principals were good,
though some were better than others. As the dame, Mrs Potty, Chris Hayward
had the children amused, and managed to look good in a range of costumes. As
The Prince/Beast Matthew Rixon has a pretty a powerful voice, and acted
well. Particularly when The Beast was trying to get Beauty to look at him, and
be more than friends. As Simple Simon, Mark Osmond provided an effective
foil for Darren Bennett and others, while generally making a good job of
playing a village idiot, without actually appearing too stupid, just a bit
slow; Some of the younger children might actually have identified with the
character when he didn’t understand things. In general it was great to see Brian
Cant on stage, after all he is such a children’s television legend, and he
still knows how to enter into the spirit of a good children’s entertainment.
But he is getting on a bit; he seemed to be playing a funny combination of
late-middle-aged pantomime father, combined with doddery old fool, and seemed a
little uncertain which way to take the character. All the same it was good to
see him still on the stage. In the all important role of Beauty Cassidy
Janson played her part well, was convincing, looked a beauty, and sang to
the high standard. As a singer she managed to hold her own amongst the other
performers. It was a real pleasure to finally get to see Darren Bennett
on stage, and to see him dance a bit. His good looks and fine tap dancing
clearly make him an excellent choice for certain musical classics. Who knows
perhaps one day he might be a rival or even successor to someone like Tim
Flavin? It is also wonderful to see Louise Plowright on stage again,
this time in a totally different role to the only other part I’ve ever seen her
in. I had wondered beforehand whether I would still think her as good an
actress in a different role. But I’m happy to say that anyone who saw her in Mamma
Mia won’t be disappointed by her performance in this pantomime. Besides
her brilliant command of the stage, the really wonderful thing about watching
her performance, is that she appears to give it her all, there’s no
going-through-the-motions in her performance, its full on to the high standard
one would expect from a West End Leading Lady, perhaps the highlight of the
show. However, all the performers do pretty well. All the same, I felt it was
worth coming down from London to see this pantomime, just to see Darren
Bennett and Louise Plowright’s performances alone. With these two in
it, it really is a case of gee wee wow how lucky, how lucky can we get.
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