Beauty and the Beast: Of Beauty and the Bledisloe

Make no mistake - Beauty and the Beast is a tremendous undertaking.  The sheer size and sophistication of the set - the startlingly elaborate character defining (as well as constricting) Weta Workshop costumes, and the almost continual orchestration, make this show a handful for any production and performance team.

Technically, opening night it has to be said, did not do it justice.

Again, the worst glitches were sound.  Mics didn't work, crackled noisily, or delivered so little presence as to diminish any vocal impact, and make lyrics indistinct.

Co-ordination between performers, the set and the score wasn't always what it should have been either, and while the lighting was atmospherically gloomy, some significant action took place obscured in shadow.

All in all, opening night could be likened to the All Blacks' first Bledisloe Cup game - frustrating is simply not the word!  But because all the elements were there - albeit sometimes in wayward orbits - the production certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt.  Hopes and expectations are that each subsequent performance turn out more like Bledisloe Cup II.

What is so right about this show are the characteisations realised by a savvy cast and chorus.  The pitch, presentation and humour exemplified by Louise Flynn as the feisty, articulate and independent Belle, Richard Shaw as the overbearingly presumptuous self-centred and caddish Gaston, Scott Andrew's beautifully timed candle-flaming Lumiere, Mark Kilsby's not-quite-up-with-it Cogsworth, and Sue Paton's busily composed Mrs Potts, really captured the spirit of this larger than life fairytale.

Dean O'Flaherty did his best to surmount his lack of physical stature as Beast with a towering vocal presence, althouigh he and a number of other characters were prone to making aimless moves. The principals were supported admirably by Sophia Parker as Babette, Andrea Lundy's Madame de la Grande Bouche, the macabre Monsieur D'Arque of Hayden Giles, Richard Rewa's buffoonish Le Fou, and the cute Chip of seven year old Oliver Lodge.

The set pieces with the Enchanted Objects were elegantly stylish, while anything with Wolves in it worked wonderfully.  Certainly there is enough enchantment here - complete with pyrotechnics and a terrific well-played little orchestra - to make this (outside a Royal New Zealand Ballet production) the best dressed show of the year.