Beauty & the Beast - UK Tour & Palladium

Interval. Don’t want to be too negative, but I’m a bit shocked at how cheap everything is? The new orchestrations for some songs sound so… empty.

Haven’t bothered writing it up in detail since I saw it, it’s not worth my time. Just a few thoughts.

Sadly, I have to agree on the whole “vibe”. This isn’t a huge step up from the UK Productions tours, which I find frankly astonishing considering they’ve taken this to the Palladium.

You know when you’re not engaged with a show, and you start counting the lights “oooh that’s the new model R3” or fixating on cheap wigs, or wondering how long that dust has been on that cloth etc. I was doing a lot of that.

Nothing nice to say really, except I like Courtney Stapleton’s voice.

I think a couple of effects weren’t working (I hope, otherwise they are just particularly bad).

Oh, and from side stalls midway back it sounded thin. Just really hollow and also quite quiet.

Thinking back, even in prior big family musicals at the Palladium such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, they always sounded great and you could see the money on stage, however you felt about the show’s artistic merit.

I mean, this production isn’t a train wreck or anything, it’s fine and the kids in the audience seemed to enjoy it. It’s just very plastic - and almost proud of its soulless safeness.

So on balance, I think this is possibly the worst thing I've ever seen in a theatre. I'll explain why in more detail, but things that I usually don't enjoy there is at least a stand out performance or element of the show, but this is just dead behind its eyes. Genuinely horrific and nothing more than a quick make-money scheme.

There is nothing redeeming of the production. The changes don't stack up and a lot of the time creates plot holes. Maison des Lunes has been cut, which is a shame as I actually always really liked it. No Matter What has always been cut, which again, is a shame. The Battle has been cut, which I actually think takes away a lot of the depth of the plot; what happens to the townsfolk? What about the inhabitants of the castle? Gaston just suddenly arrives in the beast's bedroom. It's weird.

Cuts aside, the set is horrific. If you can call it a set; many scenes literally have no set at all. Literally just an empty stage. A lot of the special effects from earlier productions have been TONED down... literally effects that are nearly 30 years old have been toned down in this production, in favour of blackouts to aid with set/costume changes and projections. I guess the floating pieces looked cool?

Then you have the cast. Shaw Taylor just doesn't have a pleasant voice to listen to? Or at least tonight, it sounded thin and stretched. He practically spoke his way through 'If I Can't Love Her', which led to a very, very flat end of act 1. The more "human" costume makes the growling seem almost comical and I can't fathom what the director was thinking with having the beast just run around the stage pretty much every time he was on; people in the audience were literally laughing!

Courtney Stapleton, vocally, was wonderful but I think she thought she was putting on a personal concert. There was no 4th wall and her solos were dramatically overacted, albeit wonderfully sang. She has a wonderful voice, but her acting needs serious work. Do you know those GCSE Drama memes on platforms like TikTok? She is the embodiment.

We had the u/s Gaston who was perfectly fine, I guess.

Cogsworth and LeFou were also fine. Nothing to really say. Nothing special.

Babette, like with Stapleton, just pretended like there was no 4th wall. Overacted to the point it was off putting.

Grande Bouche was good, I guess. If I had to pick a stand out performance it would be her?

It was all just... not great.

What a shame, I have been looking at this for a while but no-one I know has enjoyed it.

I'm on the same boat, I loved it! Fantastic performances all around and the simplistic set worked for me. I wasn't even looking forward to seeing it but got cheapish seats front row and was plesantly surprised.

I’ll add to the those who actually enjoyed the show.

In fact, I absolutely love it. I’ve seen it at lots of the tour venues and a couple of times in London.

The sets work spot on for me with the scrolls framing most scenes nicely. The costumes of the objects aren’t great but I love Belle’s look.

Really good choreography and the singing from Courtney is spot on. I prefer the understudy Beast and Gaston, Alyn Hawke to Shaq Taylor and Tome Senior.

This show does seem to be like Marmite…..

She did it when I attended. Also when singing big notes she would do Mariah Carey/Christina Aguilera-ish arm movements when she embellished the score.

She really does have an amazing voice, but her acting is as bad as the singing is good. It felt like she wasn’t playing Belle, she was in a Belle costume singing Belle songs (very well) and absolutely rinsing the audience’s adulation.

I didn’t know she had been in Six and have never seen it, but what she did on the night in BatB was very non-traditional musical theatre acting. She broke every rule you learn at school about the fourth wall and “commitment”.

She was actually the highlight of the whole thing for me, which says a lot about how poor I thought it was.

Maybe she doesn’t do it at every show? Maybe she does it when people are “in”? She did a little giggle and a curtsy a couple of times, I don’t know what to tell you.

I have no reason to doubt someone who saw her do the curtseys at another performance, even if I didn't see her do it. It's an incredibly strange thing for her to do in a traditional musical though. Who was she curtseying to? The audience? Another character on stage? It's a bit bizarre. It's not (supposed to be) panto.

Yeah it’s a weird thing to accuse two people who don’t know each other of making up. Especially when I said a couple of times already she was just about the best thing about the show.

As for why she did it - no idea. It was just a bit weird but wasn’t a big issue, the production had much bigger problems than the leading lady being a bit frivolous.

I just assumed it was directed and part of the show - no reason to think otherwise. There was plenty of gurning elsewhere, I thought it was a directorial choice to send the kids home happy.