Review

TITLE: Beauty and The Beast

VENUE: LBT

REVIEW: Andrew Hirst

THIS Christmas production at the LBT is a twist on the original fairytale theme – it’s certainly no traditional panto.

The story has been reworked into a light musical with a cast of just four and one set so you can’t afford to leave your imagination at home.

There’s no ‘he’s behind you’ kerfuffles here and don’t expect sweets thrown into the audience by some stout dame with a five o’clock shadow and the kind of make-up that would make Lily Savage seem like an angel.

It’s all about creativity so, for instance, throw a set of antlers and a fur cloak on one of your main actors and, hey presto, you’ve got yourself a beast.

It’s a stripped down version to reflect the limited cast and the clue to the thinking behind it is the fact that it’s done by East Midlands-based Engine House Theatre Company that was formed two years ago to inspire and challenge audiences through adaptations and contemporary plays.

And that’s what they set out to do here. Beauty knows she’s a looker bored with the number of would-be suitors who rapidly fall head over heels in love with her. She’s also lazy, greedy and spoilt so when her father loses their family fortune they’re forced to move to a cottage in the country with, shock, horror, no servants.

It seems things couldn’t get any worse but then her father makes a bargain with a beast – the kind of odd thing dads in fairytales do - and she must go to his castle as a prisoner or risk losing him forever. And in the castle her relationship with the beast becomes somewhat love hate – he loves her, she hates him which isn’t mellowed by his disgusting table manners and toenail chewing antics. It’s the second half when some gentle comedy kicks in.

The reason why I’m telling you all this is that the programme informs you about the actors, writer and director along with the other architects behind it but concentrates on what other work they’ve done with virtually nothing about the thinking behind this interpretation. Perhaps a few pointers would have been good.

Yet, maybe, that’s the whole idea and the audience members have to work it out for themselves, trying to follow a plot which starts slowly and, in its initial stages, won’t be easy to follow for the younger ones.

That said, apparently the primary school audiences that have been so far have been absorbed by what they’ve seen and there is enough that’s different to spark follow-up discussions in the classroom about how old tales can be given a theatrical facelift and how well that can work.

The pivotal cast member is Beauty played by the wonderfully fairytale-named Helen Woolf but she’s the opposite to big and bad as she gives the role plenty of animation from her brow to her toes and her natural sense of energy means she can quickly engage with the audience.

It’s full of new songs – and many are there to help the narrative along.

Colleagues Julian Hoult (Beast), Darren Benedict (butler and Beauty’s dad) and Laura Sheppard (cook) didn’t put a word out of place or a foot wrong.

The first half is 45 minutes and the second half-an-hour.

Beauty And The Beast runs at the LBT until December 30.