Beauty and The Beast

There is a real feeling of community spirit every time I go to see a St.Gabriel's production, Beauty and The Beast was no exception. It is performed on a school hall stage that is extended for the pantomime, some intricately painted solid backdrops to frame the scenes and some hand props are used.  I loved the use of lighting effects this year - purple half stage for the good fairy and green half stage for the baddie "Scorpio". 
The music is all provided by a lone keyboard ably played by Anne Ingham. The show itself was quite song heavy, but the audience loved them all. The Junior Chorus gave a lovely strong performance every time they appeared and always elected an audible "aww" from the audience. There were also two other chorus teams - Middle Chorus and Senior Chorus, they also gave us a lot to look at. The choreography throughout was both age and song choice appropriate, there were definitely a few chorus members who knew exactly what they were doing and weren't shy to sing out big and engage with the audience - one such chorus member was Harry Ingham, I will be keeping an eye on him and I hope to see him taking lead roles in the future. A couple of times during the ensemble numbers a black pump slipped off a foot - I commend the chorus for ignoring it and just carrying on.

Costumes were fitting to the scenes and kept fairly traditional. I did however find Beauty's chunky boots under her yellow dress a distraction and definitely not fitting to the character or the story line. Make up was fairly low key throughout, I personally prefer to see boys in the chorus with a nude or very pale pink lipstick rather than a bright red one. 
Dialogue from the off was quite rushed by all the Principals but as they settled in it did even out. Mike Waldron as Dame Dilly worked very hard, he kept his energy up right till the end and certainly worked the audience well. Albert (Josh Ingham) and Annie (Georgina Sutton) showed some superb comedy timing and there was obvious chemistry in their character portrayal, they weren't afraid to get right into the audience and were very confident on the stage. I would have liked to have seen more character development from the titular characters played by Dakota Terry and Madison Terry but I do feel that this script was weak in parts which left the characters floundering somewhat. Thomas Ingham played the "hairy" beast, he showed a nice level of empathy and humility in his performance. He used the stage well, sight lines were good, projection was good, he was very generous to his fellow actors.  Aidan Winch played his hunchback sidekick, a very funny and completely unexpected moment was when his "hunch" fell out on stage, he dealt with it well and tried to improvise until it could once again be put back in place securely.

It was an enjoyable performance, thank you for your hospitality. I look forward to seeing you all again soon. 

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.