Although I don’t usually associate March with panto season, it was with great excitement that I went to see Barrow Arts’s pantomime “Beauty and the Beast”, following their enjoyable production of Legally Blonde at the end of last year.
The pantomime tells the story of Belle (Emma Hollas) and Prince Danton (Edward Turner, clearly typecast after his appearance as “man with a large package” in Legally Blonde), whose love affair is interrupted when the Prince is turned into a beast. For this production, the beast was portrayed by a different actor (Marcus Esposito-Edge in full beastly makeup), which allowed for some fun “transformation” scenes. Unfortunately, the main characters were sort of pushed to the side in favour of the more comedy characters, although Hollas and Turner did get the opportunity to perform a duet and dance when the Prince’s reflection appeared in a magical mirror.
More stage time was afforded to Dame Madame Fifi (Richard Bailey) and her sidekick Jacques (Macauley Crossley). It was clear that both had taken similar roles in previous pantomimes, and were well into their groove by now, with excellent chemistry and lots of sarcastic comments directed at the audience. There was plenty of in-jokes for their regular panto-goers, but this didn’t detract for newbies like me – in fact, I was intrigued by the tease of the infamous “bench scene” in act one, and when the scene eventually arrived in act two, it did not disappoint!
Belle’s father, Alphonse (Craig Chambers), attempts to rescue Belle from the clutches of the beast, but instead is thrown into an insane asylum by the formidable Le Fou (Laura Haddad), with help from the incredibly vain Gustave (Alex Thompson, whose rendition of McFly’s “It’s all about you” was rewritten to “It’s all about me”). Alphonse also has two other daughters to deal with (no wonder people feared for his sanity) – the “gruesome twosome” Whitney and Britney (Armore Taylor and Jessica Brompton), who delivered a horrifically hilarious version of “Sisters are doing it for themselves”.
Two of my favourite characters were hair stylists Marcel and Monique (Jackson Davinson and Lucy Hardy), who brought lots of fun to every scene they were in, even if they didn’t add much to the story (but then, who goes to see a panto for the plot?). Hardy played the “dumb blonde” stereotype a little too well, whilst Davinson seemed to appear onstage whenever there was mention of a potential single man (or beast)!
Often there is a tendency to bring too much “Disney” to pantomimes, and whilst there were definitely elements of Disney in this production (including an excellent performance of “Tale as old as time” by Iris-Matilda Symonds as Flora), I was pleasantly surprised to see “Be our guest” replaced by Weird Al’s “Eat it”.
Overall, this was a great production with so many different things crammed in – I can’t finish this review without mentioning Francescia Benjamin as the evil Belladonna, who tried to turn not only Prince Danton into a beast, but the entire audience! An excellent afternoon of entertainment, and I can’t wait to see the next one.
Tom Morley, March 2023
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