Beauty and the Beast

When Howard Ashman said, "animation is the last place left to produce the Broadway musical," he wasn't kidding. The Disney films produced with Menken and Ashman at the helm have been very successful. This can be credited to the fact that they were produced in the style of a Broadway musical. In fact, Beauty and the Beast remains the only animated film ever to receive an Emmy nomination for Best Picture. It comes as no surprise then, that Beauty and the Beast would be the inaugural production to launch the theatrical branch of the Walt Disney Company.

There are many challenges included in the transformation of an animated film such as Beauty and the Beast into a stage-play. One such obstacle was translating the enchanted objects, whose liveliness depends solely on animation, into actual living beings. From an actor's standpoint, this translation is fantastic. It is not uncommon for the actor to be required to bring humanistic qualities to animals. (The great success of Cats can attest to this.) However, to anthropromorphize an inanimate object is something entirely different. It is a concept that only could have been conceived in the mind of Howard Ashman (who, by the way, is also responsible for the jive-talking man-eating plant, Audrey II, from Little Shop of Horrors). This transformation was accomplished through great makeup and costumes as well as some pretty damn good dancing and acting. The costume design for this play was so fantastic that Disney had to procure a patent for an article of clothing worn by the character of Lumier.

Another hurdle encountered in presenting this play was expanding a film, whose length was an hour and half, into a full-length Broadway production. This proved to be no challenge for Disney. The original uncut version of the film (due in theaters sometime next year) was actually longer and more involved than what was presented to the public. The film was cut to an hour-and-a-half so that the attention span deficient audience (children), at whom this film was aimed, would be able to follow along. All Disney had to do was plug in those numbers that were cut and -- Viola!!

Since film and stage are two very different art forms there were some elements in the film that had to be cut entirely. For example, the Burkley-esque dance routines in "Be Our Guest" were unable to be reproduced on the stage, since this form of choreography requires points of view that can only be seen through the camera's lens. The choreography of the rest of the show, however, more than makes up for this one small defect. For example, in the "Gaston" number the choreographer synchronized the clinking of beer glasses to not only fit in really nicely with the dance, but to also add a little spice to the musical aspect of the number. Choreography similar to that in Cats was used to give actors an animal-like quality when portraying wolves and beasts.

In this review I have discussed some of the many challenges encountered in adapting a film into a Broadway production and how Disney overcame them. However, the most difficult task in an endeavor such as this is avoiding reproducing the original work. Aside from nostalgia, there must be a reason for an audience who has seen the film to come see the play. The film and the play must each have their own unique qualities. Beauty and the Beast is such a magnificent play because Disney succeeded in creating a new entity. The film and the play are two entirely different beasts (pun intended).

Beauty and the Beast can be seen at the Palace Theater, 1569 Broadway (at 47th St.) For Ticket information, call: 307-4100