Beauty and the Beast

Synopsis

The story of Belle and the prince turned to a beast till he can make someone love him.

Our Review:

11 December 2007

The seasonal show at the Lyric Hammersmith, is usually slightly different, not to say off-kilter, and this year’s offering, Beauty and the Beast, a collaboration between the Lyric and the Warwick Arts Centre, is no exception. It is rather harder, though, to say exactly what it is.

The piece is created by the Told by an Idiot company, which take its name from that line in Macbeth about life being a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Here, there’s sound, and a bit of fury, and just a pinch of significance in the story of young Belle following a course of tough love to tame the Beast and appease her dead mother’s memory.

Paul Hunter’s production of his own script (co-written with Carl Grose) mixes elements of crude pantomime with Gallic surrealism, daringly invoking Jean Cocteau’s great 1946 movie and then diverting into total silliness. But the result is jarring and unsatisfactory, as though the attempt at so...

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Latest User Review

Neil - 11 December 2007:

While I normally dread the idea of family panto at Christmas, I enjoyed the topsy-turvy wackiness of this production. Lisa Hammond is a brilliantly modern Belle (or Beauty for short). Xavier Marzan is her fantastic four-legged confidant - and her sisters are ugly but truly gruesome in a wickedly funny way. While the Beast's appearance did have children running for cover in the theatre, my kids have been running around with oven-gloves on their heads pretending to be Belle's faithful dog Kronenburg all weekend. Lots of fun....

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