The renaissance of timeless animated Disney musicals occurred during the time of “Beauty and the Beast” more than 20 years ago. There followed the golden age of Disney stage musicals based on the cartoons, which have included “The Lion King,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Tarzan” and “Aladdin.”
Undoubtedly there’s someone working on one for “Frozen.”
Meanwhile the Beast rolls on, on Broadway and off, in community theaters and in nationally touring productions, the latest of which rolled into the Warner Theatre this week to take the edge off a chilly night.
It’s comfort food for a lot of musical fans: Songs they know, coupled with a visually vivid presentation of fanciful sets, a complicated, multitasking chorus of a couple dozen, wearing splendid costumes that must number in the hundreds. People stood and cheered opening night.
But they would have done so too, if it were about half as long and tailored more to the young set that was well represented in the crowd.
But since this is Broadway, its makers bolstered the story and especially the songs for the stage, throwing in Tim Rice to finish work by Alan Menken. To be sure, both central characters had been lacking showstoppers, as the movie’s best songs were handled (and continue to be done so) by a candlestick (“Be Our Guest”) and a teapot (the title song).
Adding songs, as stirring as they may be, seems to delay the central drama — that a spark of love will undo the curse that makes the Beast so beastly. By the end of a long act one they don’t even like each other yet.
But there’s a lot of fun up to then in Rob Roth’s direction, with the dazzling village opening song and puppet-aided action that involve a lot of wolves in the forest. It’s the kind of set direction and movement that just can’t be replicated in lesser productions, no matter how hard they try. And it pays off.
Still, there’s a kind of blandness to the entirety of the cast, most of whom are literally right off Disney cruise boats and are full of the credits that indicate an industry endlessly churning out bright faced ingenues and big shouldered heroes and bad guys.
Still, Jillian Butterfield as Belle has a strong and ringing voice that carries her through; and Beast Ryan Everett Wood’s voice is strong as well, though he doesn’t get to sing all that much. His is an odd performance — it seems he needs a kind of brooding dignity to make him the least bit interesting to Belle. More often, he was acting kind of shy and goofy which may make him a less scary persona to kids but undercuts his menace and generally the whole story (that he turns into a handsome prince at the end seems to bely Belle’s good faith in his hairy face; if she likes him for his soul, why does he need to emerge clean shaven — or is that just a bonus?).
The tough part of translating a cartoon to stage is that you can’t quite be as free with the trapped people who have been turned into household items. Nor can they really compete with their standout voice originators. So as well as Emily Jewell does as Mrs. Potts, she’s no Angela Lansbury. The lanky Patrick Pevehouse doesn’t quite master the saucy essence of Maurice Chevalier that Jerry Orbach got in the movie; when he juts his hips it just looks out of place.
It’s hard to get a feeling from the other objects as well — Thomas Mothershed as the clock and Kelly Teal Goyette as the bureau. And though Chip the tea cup is cute in the movie, it’s just bizarre to see the disembodied head of Ross Nemeth (alternating with Logan Jeremy Sejas) wheeled around on stage, more like something out of “Side Show” (though, yes, seeing him scamper when the spell is broken is an emotional highlight).
If there’s any standout in the traveling cast, it’s big chinned Cameron Bond, who may be a better, more cartoonish Gaston than the one in the movie. But playing over the top (which may be the way to communicate to top rafters) doesn’t work for others. The overly broad reactions of his sidekick Jake Bridges as Lefou may play to the back row but it’s way too exaggerated to those in the orchestra.
Overall, this “Beauty and the Beast” delivers all that its fans wish it would — and at its length, a whole lot more as well. It may be a tale as old as time, but sometimes it seems as long as time as well.
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Natsu Onoda Power’s “The T Party” had its start as a workshop in the summer of 2013. As such, you’d expect the return of the work “celebrating gender transformation” at the Forum Theatre in Silver Spring to be a kind of loosey goosey thing.
But this loosey? Walk in and they’re having karaoke over here, and taking pictures with accessories in a booth over there. Inside the theater, should you be square enough to actually go to your seat, there’s a full fledged dance party.
It turns out to be a replication of a high school prom and you’re invited to join in, where some mild stories of a dude angry that his ex is dancing with another girl is played out before women are voted prom kings while guys are voted prom queens.
All of this thankfully serves as a sideshow — or maybe a pre-play intermission — before they get down to business and present some strong and moving scenes that play along the work’s theme.
The scenes are vivid and hit home in part because so many of them are personal stories, recreated for the stage: Two girls’ fling in college, the study of homosexual behavior of bottle nose dolphins, two transgender women who meet and begin to realize the many paths within their own.
Neither preachy or overly rainbow-flag waving, “T Party” instead shows the complexities of humanity that goes way beyond the black and white gender identities society has mapped out.
More than that, it’s has a lot of clever and entertaining scenes, from a nature exploration of bear behavior at a club near Thomas Circle (where a Goldilocks just can’t be noticed), or a rock ’n’ roll reversal to the macho song in plain sight, Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady.”
that have developed into more interesting.
Non-binary sex education class for kids frames the issue based on the hooha they happen to have on their heads: peaches or bananas.
An initial scene is told in the language of online texts; another concerns the confession of a man who harbored a female personality and blogged about his experience.
One spells out the details of a phalloscopy operation as the cast sings the song “One” from “A Chorus Line.”
And while they sing of the number, the cast spells out the facts: One in 250 people in the U.S. born male seek sex reassignment surgery; for those born women, it’s one in 500. More chilling: One in 250 people in the U.S. identify as transgender; and one in 150 transgender people in the U.S. die by homicide.
The statistics get worse: One in five homeless teens in the U.S. identify as transgender; and one that bears repeating (and is repeated): One in two people who identify as transgender has had a suicide attempt before the age of 20.
All this in light of recent news of the 17 year old transgender teen in Ohio who killed herself because her parents wouldn’t accept her, and it’s clear that “The T Party” is elucidating an important issue that may lead to understanding and a turn from these disturbing numbers. Does theater have a higher calling?
Still, it needs to be repeated that there isn’t a lecturing tone to “The T Party.” Indeed, everybody has a little to learn — even these cast members, who admit what they said in rehearsal or comments from some of those who attended the workshop production (including the conservative who attended because he thought it would be about the Tea Party).
The exuberant cast — Allie Villarreal, Sara Dabney Tisdale, Rafael Sebastian, Brendan Quinn, Nehemiah Markos, Rachel Hynes, Zachary Gilbert, Jonathan Feuer — puts its all in the production.
Power’s direction is sharp and vibrant. As she was behind the eye-popping local productions of “A Trip to the Moon” and “Astro Boy and the God of Comics,” it’s visually arresting with inventive use of overhead projections by Alex Leidy.
Mary Keegan did lights; Francesca Jandasek choreographed and Megan Behm was something called the “audience experience designer.” It was a good experience, so I guess she did a good job.
“The T Party” is groundbreaking in its theme and production and ought to succeed in enlightening and entertaining in its run. And along the way, some may even join the dance party at the start.
