This Beauty is Belle of the ball

Perth’s theatre company may be in exile from its lovely home in the High Street, closed for redevelopment for at least another two years. Yet its annual traditional panto – staged at the Concert Hall with the help of a mock Victorian proscenium arch – has been racing up on the rails in recent years, to challenge the big boys in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow.

And now Perth absolutely hits the bullseye, with a hilarious, beautifully-cast version of Beauty And The Beast set in the wee Perthshire town of Auchendreich, where the Beast has his castle.

This brisk panto version of the tale, written by the great Alan Mchugh, dispenses with Beauty’s family back-story and dear old Dad. Instead, it cuts straight to the heart of things, where aged retainer Angus Mcfungus – the last servant to remain loyal to the Beast after the witch’s curse – patrols Auchendreich High Street in search of a girl with a heart big enough to break the spell with her love, and meets Belle, on an ill-fated surfing trip with her daft friends Betty Blumenthal the cook, and Betty’s even dafter son Boabby (cue a chorus of Surfing Stanley Bay, a nearby dent in the River Tay).

Also on the trail are Ugly Sisters Deadly Nightshade and Poison Ivy; Nightshade the very witch who cursed the Prince when he rejected her, and Ivy, her put-upon wee sister, doomed by Nightshade’s spell to kill any man she snogs.

So it’s off to the castle for twoand-a-half hours of riotous fun, song, dance, ghoulies, ghosties and romance, as Belle wins the Beast’s heart, Betty and Boabbie pure josh him into keeping them alive, and a brilliant team of young dancers in 17th century finery spring out of the family portraits to join in the nightly fun.

The success of Ian Grieve’s Few things do for the mystique of a pop artist like an appearance on reality television, and those with even a casual awareness of Alexander O’neal’s time on Celebrity Big Brother this year may now feel more connected to the 62-year-old Minneapolis hitmaker than they might like. Is this a good or a bad thing? It’s not as if O’neal’s now-traditional seasonal tour date in Scotland (the last couple have happened in Glasgow) was any less well-attended or enthusiastically received here.

It’s been a couple of decades since he had a hit worthy of the name, but O’neal remains depends, at heart, on the Rolls-royce quality of his cast. Amybeth Littlejohn is a gorgeous, humorous Belle, the Beast is rising star actorplaywright Martin Mccormick, Amanda Beveridge is superb as Deadly Nightshade, her wee sister is Angela Darcy of Janis Joplin Full Tilt fame, Tom Mcgovern plays Mcfungus, and Betty is the remarkable Barrie Hunter, now quite possibly the best traditional Dame in Scotland.

If the casting is superb, though, there are also terrific original set and costume designs by Ken Harrison, easily the finest so far on this year’s panto circuit; along with joyous choreography by Lynne Bustard, and music, from the three-piece Perth Panto Orchestra, that not only drives the show from start to finish, but often becomes a real convivial part of it, at the heart of this beautiful home-cooked Scottish panto, done to perfection. a dependably enthusiastic live performer, his full complement of three backing singers and six musicians – three on keyboard, one of whom played a little bass on the only guitar sighted all evening – suggesting this was anything but a cheap ‘n’ cheerful revue turn.

The show revelled in a preponderance of schmaltzy ballads, with Sunshine delivered from a stool, Val Doonican-style, and Never Knew Love Like This oddly delegated to the backing trio while O’neal took a break, but his voice at least contains enough depth and strength to deliver them convincingly.

To his credit, he kept the lyric and rhythm of If You Were Here Tonight going while being aggressively flirted with by the lady he’d chosen from the audience to serenade. Elsewhere, there were surprising returns to his more visceral, analogue roots in the same Minneapolis scene which Prince sprang from. The Lovers’ warm keyboard funk enticed many from their seats and What Is This Thing Called Love was similarly well-received, but the closing double of Criticize and Fake were a revelation, a pounding Soul Train funk medley delivered in style while fending off selfies from the dancing fans he’d welcomed onstage. John Butt’s programme with the SCO was a chronological trip from the robust stylised Baroque of JS Bach to the mature classical symmetry of Mozart, by way of Bach’s lesserknown first-born Wilhelm Friedemann (WF) and more commonly-aired second-born son, Carl Philipp Emanuel (CPE), both of whom represent different facets of that period of stylistic turmoil intervening the two major classified periods.

Butt started his journey (from the harpsichord) conducting Bach’s Orchestral Suite No 4, a cocktail of mainly dance movements typical of its time, magically enlivened by Bach’s insatiable inventiveness and the signaproduction