HEADLINE | ‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’

Beauty and the Beast Epic-scale Disney musical
opens at Alabama Shakespeare Festival

By THOMAS B. HARRISON

Published: November 19, 2006

On stage, as in the movies, fantasy becomes reality.

The difference is that in the world of theater, the illusion is created without retakes, visual effects or high-tech editing.  What you see is what you get, seven or eight nights a sweek.  Live and in person, without “pause” or “rewind”.

Consider shows such as “Phantom of the Opera” and “Les Miserable”, with their casts of dozens and a seemingly infinitesimal number of moving parts.

Which is the simple reason to marvel at what is taking place at the Wynton M. Blount Cultural Park in Mongtgomery, where Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” opens tonight for a limited holiday run through Dec. 23 on the reconfigured Festival Stage.

Under the direction of artistic director Geoffrey Sherman, “Beauty and the Beast” is a really big show in every sense: 38 actors; elaborate sets and costumes; a live orchestra; singing and dancing and a Beast who must be seen to be believed.  (No pre-production images were released.  The better to wow audiences.)

The cast includes professional and non-professional, local ad national performers.  Thomas Hinds of the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra will conduct a 14- piece ensemble in songs as “Be Our Guest,” “Home” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

“B &B” has been drawing audiences to Broadway for a decade, and the show’s popularity evidently has not dimmed.  After a week of previews, the musical will open to enormous media fanfare in the stat capital, perhaps luring a new audience with the music of Alan Menken , lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, and a book by Linda Woolverton.

Technical director Le Hook says the demands of the show are “pretty extreme.”

“This is the biggest show we’ve built since I’ve been here, by a factor of 200 percent,” he says.  “We’ve opened up (the stage) considerably.”

…Costume Designer Susan Branch, a guest artist, faced a different challenge in researching and designing costumes for “Beauty and the Beast.”  There are 84 in all, which is not an extraordinary number of costumes for a musical, but some are quite complex.

“On this kind of production, so many costumes are not based on the human form,” Branch says.  “You have to come up with enchanted objects that are reasonably comfortable for the actors to wear and do their job.”

“You have giant teapots, wardrobes, people with plates on their backs – the actors can play in them, but they are not burdened too badly.  I love working on something like this.  IT really does challenge my creativity and the creativity of the people realizing the costumes.”

“Usually you don’t get costumes until dress rehearsal,” says Laura Shoop, who plays Belle (Beauty).  “Once you get the costume on, it’s like a whole new show.  Because I’m a human and not an inanimate object, my costumes are really spectacular – big dresses, which I’m used to.”

Certainly she will not have to navigate the stage wearing the kind of gown she donned for the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “Il Trovatore”.

“It was huge!” says Shoop.  “We couldn’t sit down.  It was a three-hour opera, so one of the dressers would lift up the back of the dress and kick a stool under it so I could lean back a little bit.”

“Il Trovator” at the Met was “really awesome,” Shoop says.

Catching a breather in a $50,000 dress, however, was priceless.

Beyond wardrobe concerns, an epic-scale musical such as “Beauty and the Beast” presents challenges for an actor, even one familiar with his character.

“I’m getting to know the Beast character quite well, “says Gregg Goodbrod, who also played the role at the North Carolina Theater in Raleigh.  “there is so much to it if you don’t look at it like a cartoon.  Everything is motivated through real emotion.”

Goodbod says the Beast is a prince laboring under a curse brought on by his own bad nature.

“He really has to grow up,” the actor says.  “At the beginning of the show he’s spoiled and unkind, and a curse is put on the whole household.  By the time (Belle/Beauty) arrives, there is little hope left.”

Enter Belle, who helps him find it.

“Because I’m a human with real emotions and a real journey in this, I have to stay true to that, flesh out the story and make it more of a fairy tale,” Shoop says.

“That’s the great challenge to have because as an actor that’s what you search for in a character.  You want to dig deep and make them three-dimensional”

“Belle dreams big.  She experienced a tragedy early in her life and found solace in books and stories, which made her dream about something bigger than where she is – a little town that’s a quiet village, and she doesn’t feel she belongs there.”

“But she’s tough to stand up to a big scary monster,” she says.  “She’s extremely compassionate but tough and ambitious.  It’s a wonderful character to play.

In the beginning, her relationship with Goodbrod’s Beastie Boy is hat at first sight.  After all, this creature imprisoned her father in a dungeon.

“But she realizes behind this monster is a soul,”  says Shoop, “and she draws more of it out of him.  She brings him out of that beast façade he struggles with.”

She says Goodbrod is a terrific co-star.

“I couldn’t ask for a better beast.”

Among her most enjoyable theater experiences was a year and a half on Broadway as daughter Hodel in the musical, “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“That was really special,” she says, “because to have that long period of time to really play a character, there’s constant discovery.  And there needs to be.  Otherwise, after the 300th show you’re doing the same thing.”

“You have to be constantly searching for more depth, and that character gave me so much of it.”

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