Theatre Aquarius Christmas musical
This production of “Beauty and the Beast” plays Disney sweet and cartoon simple
If you are a big fan of Disney-type musicals, you might want to stop reading right now.
OK, I know they push all the right buttons. They have gooey feel-good centres and they are just about a licence to print money.
No big surprise really. The Disney folks never went into making Broadway musicals with the idea of taking massive risk. They put out those millions of dollars to create splashy, rah-rah shows that are more eye-boggling and cheerleading than heartfelt.
Mostly, they’re all about throwing glitz in your face and substituting boundless energy for any real character development.
“Beauty and the Beast” hides behind the notion it’s really about redemption and the power of love. Actually, it’s all about dancing knives and forks and a truly amazing cartwheeling rug. Taken on that level it’s decent entertainment, but there’s no hiding it’s a paint by numbers musical.
Involvement is there all right, but it’s all in the tricks.
There’s also no denying “Beauty and the Beast,” with its soaring ballads and glued together scenario, packs in audiences just about everywhere it plays.
There’s nothing new here unless you think a heroine who rescues an enchanted man is big news. When it comes to feisty females onstage you can go all the way back to “Calamity Jane,” “Annie Get Your Gun” and “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” More recently, you might even try “Annie.”
The thing is, none of these shows wavered far from their source material. They all had great songs, too. And they weren’t afraid of the dark.
Even “Oliver!” was an intentionally dark Dickens musical in the beginning, before the movies and community theatre got at it.
With shows like “Beauty and the Beast,” we’ve pretty much thrown out the darker Bruno Bettleheim elements of fairy tales and gone for candy cane songs and eccentric characters.
Does all this mean Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” (notice how the Disney name appears above the title, ahead of the authors) isn’t worth seeing? Not at all. Of the musicals the Disney company trots out regularly it’s probably the best. And at least it’s a real family show, not some warmed over old movie like “White Christmas” or “It’s A Wonderful Life” trying to disguise itself as a stage musical.
OK, now for the good news. The audience I sat with at Aquarius’s Sunday matinee cheered the place down. They loved the athletic, if not so inventive dancing choreographer Robin Calvert used to fill time and space. They liked the script by Linda Woolverton and the soaring songs by Alan Menken, Tim Rice and Howard Ashman, even though the music was far too loud and at times shrill. They rooted for Belle and The Beast to get together at the final curtain, to break all bad spells and to send the whole pack of us home happy.
On that level, I suppose, this Aquarius production, directed with a firm hand by Alex Mustakas, and impressively rotating on John Dinning’s story book sets was a hit.
It’s just that I’ve seen much better
“Beauty and the Beast” productions before, one of them right there at Aquarius, directed by Mustakas. And this same director did a spectacular version at St. Jacob’s Country Playhouse In 2005.
Back then there was an aspect of reality beyond stage cartoons. Those under the charm of the play’s wicked spell weren’t eccentric show folks, they were real people trying to find a way out in a world spiralling out of control. Just like Dorothy and her friends in “The Wizard of Oz” they were always real people, even if they were wearing tin, fur, straw and ruby slippers.
They aren’t here; real, I mean. They’re simply cartoons designed to perform on cue.
Kristen Peace, Valerie Boyle and Keith Savage, as Madame de la Grande Bouche, Mrs. Potts and Lumiere, respectively, have been so much better in other shows.
So was Jayme Armstrong. A beguiling Roxie Hart in “Chicago,” she works too hard here to keep the show going, but there’s not enough warmth and vulnerability in her Belle. And Michael Blake’s Beast, though good, has been tamed so much there’s little venom in him, which robs the musical of conflict.
Ian Dekker smiles ingratiatingly from his teacup as Chip (the role is played by William Thompson at some performances) and Graeme Goodhall is truly amazing as the airborne carpet.
Otherwise, the best performance in this sweet, but saccharine production, comes from Hamilton actor Nick Settimi who brings reality to his small role as D’Arque, a villainous asylum administrator.
“Beauty and the Beast” has drawn huge crowds in a Broadway world where brilliant musicals like “The Scottsboro Boys,” “Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson” and “Spring Awakening” failed because audiences didn’t want to confront anything disturbing. Well, you pays your money and you takes your choice.