Beauty and the Beast

Pleasure Folk’s production of Beauty and the Beast was my first visit to a pantomime this year, and I was really looking forward it and hoping that this production would be as good and enjoyable as last year’s Peter Pan, well I am glad to say that this show was more than up to Pleasure Folk’s high standards.

Although the storyline follows a similar path to the Disney film there may have been an expectation that all the well-known songs associated with film would have been included, unfortunately due to Disney’s Rights Regulations this was not possible so you may think that the audience would have been disappointed, but personally this was not the case I thought all the song choices were very enjoyable enhancing the story, and were performed extremely well  by very talented performers with lovely singing voices, quite honestly I didn’t notice or miss the Disney songs at all.

Once again, Gemma Briscoe was able to perform her magic on this production as Director, Liz Wainwright provided the entertaining choreography, and the talented Marley Ellis Brennan was Musical Director. The production team had made some exceptionally good choices in their cast. They had an abundance of talent on the stage, which included some young actors and singers who have potentially exciting futures ahead of them, as there were some outstanding performances and everyone without exception pulled their weight. Hannah Arnold as Belle was exactly right for the part and produced a lovely and brave inquisitive character, she was complemented excellently by Jamie Mather as The Beast who manage to bring out the differences in character between the Prince and the Beast very well. Emily Mayne was an excellent Baddie called Sacre- Bleu having a good rapport with the audience as well as singing and acting very well, producing a good accent which enhanced her characterisation. Where there’s a baddie, then there must be a good character to foil their misdeeds and, in this production, we had the mirror played excellently by the talented Isla Graham. But what’s a pantomime without the requisite Dame and her sidekick the children’s best friend played as usual by Jim Briscoe as Dame Nanny Nightnurse with audience comedy favourite Scott Allen as Brie. Jim and Scott make an incredibly great comedy team, holding the audience's attention while reacting to unexpected situations and entertaining the audience with their ability. Steve Rutter was very believable and just right as Professor Phillip Belle’s father. Then we had an excellent performance by Alex Sheeran as the narcissistic self-centred Franque with Jack Elder as his comedic sidekick Clochard. Jack had good comic timing and performed very well alongside Alex and together, their spectacular entrances with the chorus had lots of children in the audience dancing to the music. Arriving at the Beast’s Castle we meet the inhabitants who have been turned into cutlery, condiments and other household utensils and ornaments. Zara Newton as Fourchette the cook had great stage presence, a beautiful singing voice and produced a lovely upbeat excellent character There were very good performances by Megan Lawson as young Coulliere, the spoon. We also meet Steve Coghlan as Sale and Mark Charnock as Pouvre, Salt and Pepper to us, who made a nice comedy team and were able to show off their lovely singing voices as well. Between and during scene changes we were entertained by Eden Wainwright performing her ring acrobatics as the Rose which went down very well with the audience.

The chorus of adults and young people were an incredibly good support to the principal cast and had lots of energy while enjoying themselves which was noted by the audience and the dancers performed the choreography by Liz Wainwright expertly. The band were very good producing the right level of sound and supporting the cast while enhancing the performance on stage, well done to Musical Director Marley Ellis-Brennan and the rest of the band. The production was also enhanced by efficient scene changing, lovely colourful well thought out costumes and expertly planned and operated lighting and sound. Well done to Stage Manager Michael Chambers and his Stage Crew. Congrats to Props, Costumes, Child Protection, Prompt and all others working backstage, front of house and the expert know how of the Technical Crew.

Congratulations to all involved for bringing this very entertaining enjoyable production to the stage I had a lovely evening thank you.

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