The Stage

Beauty and the Beast

Published Thursday 14 December 2006 at 13:00 by Scott Matthewman

Appropriately for a pantomime starring Wayne Sleep, Beauty and the Beast’s main strength is its formidable dance troupe. Dancers from the Maria Anderson School of Dance and Drama, accompanied by Matthew Bower and Nick Collier, add a layer of enchantment that is at times absent from the rest of the production.

Gary Tushaw’s Count of Christi Monto debuts as likeable, if a little rude, but after his transformation into the eponymous Beast, all sense of gravitas disappears. Of the principals, only Robert Breslin, in his first pantomime, delivers a memorable performance as the roguish Gaston. His comic timing and impressive vocal performance suggest a bright future.

As comic relief, Bruce Green’s Professor Crackpot and Keith Hopkins’ Madame Kitty disappoint, with both stumbling over lines and corpsing in ways that imply they’re having much more fun than the audience. The panto’s main villain, Witch Hazel, is impressively played by Helen Jeckells (also the show’s choreographer) but is underused.

With poor lighting and sound performance throughout, one can’t help feeling that there is so much potential being wasted here. Still, the young audience found the increased pace of the second act a vast improvement on the overlong first half and left moderately happy.