As multigenerational crowd-pleasers go, it’s difficult to top Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, now making a stop on its North American tour at Broadway in Chicago’s Cadillac Palace. Though the audience sported its fair share of pint-size princesses during Thursday’s opening, the excitement level among adult fans was palpable as Belle–an actor so perfectly cast that Belle is literally her middle name–walked through the French village singing her titular song and dreaming of a larger life moments after the Enchantress sentenced a nearby prince to life as The Beast.
If ever there was a critic-proof musical, this is it. But I’m happy to report that, 34 years after the animated film that started this franchise for Disney and 31 since the Broadway debut of the stage musical version, Beauty and the Beast delivers the romantic escapism its fans desire with a high-gloss professional sheen.
The production quality here is wonderful, but it’s the songs that make this show such a perennial favorite. On opening night, “Be Our Guest” elicited a sustained mid-act ovation, one that was also well-deserved for the fun choreography (including a Busby Berkeley-style finish captured by an overhead camera and projected larger than life onstage). “Gaston” proved a raucous crowd-pleaser, as usual. And, of course, the title song brought it all home as it celebrated the opposites-attract “tale as old as time” to soaring effect.
Kyra Belle Johnson delivers a nuanced performance as Belle, showing her progression from dreamy girl to mature woman, even as Fergie L. Philippe finds both the pathos (a stirring rendition of “If I Can’t Lover Her”) and the humor in the Beast’s fumbling attempts to rein in his rage and woo Belle. Rather than just forcing us to accept their union as an inevitable plot point, they do a fine job of showing how these characters would actually be attracted to each other.
Stephen Mark Lukas, on the other hand, keeps things suitably cartoonish and broad as Belle’s blowhard suitor Gaston, while Danny Gardner makes the most of his butane candle-hands as big-hearted romantic Lumiere (although his many “flame-on” moments, some of which came uncomfortably close to the curtains as he was exiting the stage, did bring to mind the 1903 Iroquois Theater fire where the Nederlander now stands).
If you like the movie, the earlier productions of this musical and the songs–or even if you would just like a lovely evening’s escape from the beastly state of the world–this Beauty and the Beast will leave you with a full heart and a broad smile.
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast runs through August 2 at Cadillac Palace Theatre.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Matthew Murphy
