Beauty and the Beast has always been my favourite Disney animated film and here's why: it has the best original score and music of any film in the last 1000 years and the best rooftop fightscene ever. Tonight I went and saw the St Kentigern College production of the musical of that film and it was great.
Grace was both a dancing winebottle and silly girl #2, one of three such girls who swoon over Gaston and fall over a lot. She was very convincing in both capacities and I was very very proud of her. The rest of the acting was pretty mint too. Lumiere and Gaston in particular were fantastic! They sounded so much like their filmic counterparts that I was half convinced that they were the movie come alive. Belle and Beast were both great too; they used their own voices but I don't hold that against them, because they would probably have been harder to imitate. "Kill the Beast" is the best song.
I had one small qualm with the musical, and that was that its choreography degenerated towards the end. When the evil peasants were attacked by the cutlery in the castle things became very confusing. There were these mental girls (who were apparently supposed to be napkins) jumping into some boys arms and I fail to see why. The fact that they did it several times made me think that they probably just liked being held and that grossed me out. Not that it was their fault the choreography was confusing... but one of the napkins walked off stage holding hands with one of the villagers. It is little details like that that shake you from your immersement in the drama. Plus the fight between Beast and Gaston was lame. The fact that they didn't stage it on a roof was a bad start. They just pushed each other over for a while and then after Beast was stabbed he mauled Gaston to death... which isn't how it happened in the movie. I understand that it is a school production, and have it on Grace's authority that Gaston kicked Beast in the face and drew copious amounts of blood last night, but I think they could have choreographed a better fake fight.
I really liked it overall though. For real.
Hahaha. You should be a theater critic. I think it's time to watch the film again. The Beast scared me too much when I was young. I haven't seen it since. Apart from on ice. That was amazing. I used to have a Chip cup. It was the coolest thing ever.
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