Review of Beauty and the Beast – Bristol Hippodrome by Melanie Jeffrey, winner of the Parent Zone competition.

One of my favourite Disney films has to be Beauty and the Beast and I have always wanted to see the award winning stage show, well my chance came last night when I saw the production at the Bristol Hippodrome Theatre and I have to say it lived up to all my expectations. We took my nine year old Daughter and my slightly reluctant 14 year old Son with us but by the time the show had finished he was just as blown away by it as the rest of us were.

This production is extremely slick and well polished but then you wouldn’t expect anything less from Disney. All the big production numbers from the film were included in the show as well as some new ones including Human Again which was cut from the original film. The highlight for us was Be Our Guest and I happened to glance down at my Daughter and saw a look of pure awe on her face at the special effects during this number.

All the main cast gave very strong performances with Ashley Oliver as the typical Disney heroine Belle and Matthew Cammelle as the suitably scary but at the same time tender Beast. However our favourite performances came from Ben Harlow as the dastardly Gaston and Ben Stock as a somewhat camp Lumiere. The principals very well supported by all the other cast members most of whom had to double up in their various roles so hats off to wardrobe for all the quick costume changes that must have gone on.

Another mention has to go to the backstage crew for the seamless scene changes and atmospheric lighting and pyrotechnics. The scene where the Beast is transformed back into the Prince certainly left us guessing as to how it was done. If I have to make one small criticism it has to be the amount of dry ice used in some scenes as it masked some of the action on stage.

All in all an extremely enjoyable evening and I would highly recommend anyone to catch this tour. It certainly put us in the Christmas mood and we were singing the songs all the way home.

The show runs until this Saturday 6th December.