Rainbow Stage invites you to be its guest

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This article was published 17/08/2018 (2091 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Beauty and the Beast is undoubtedly a popular musical. That’s why it will have been mounted at Rainbow Stage three times in the past 14 years. Heck, even Disney has made two different film versions, the animated original in 1991 and a live-action remake, which last year grossed in excess of a billion dollars.

People keep coming for good reasons. The songs by Alan Menken (music) and Howard Ashman and Tim Rice (lyrics) are loaded with showstoppers. The overall tone is cheeky towards its storybook-fantasy premise without holding back on the delicious romantic shmaltz attendant with the story of bookish beauty Belle and her taming of a cruel prince cursed with the animalistic visage of… what? A warthog? A muskox?

And the supporting cast features a range of indelible characters, from a singing candlestick to a narcissistic he-man villain.

It’s good stuff, content-wise, and the Rainbow production does it proud under director Rob Herriot. If Rainbow’s season-opener, the Neil Sedaka jukebox musical Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, was comparatively spartan in its production, this show is downright lush with a 13-piece orchestra, a cast of 33 (including the children chorus) and fabulous set design by Brian Perchaluk.

Belle (Stephanie Sy) is a young woman as smart as she is beautiful and consequently constricted by the “provincial life” of her small French town, especially as she is feeling the pressure from the entitled, ultra-macho idiot Gaston (Galen Johnson) to hook up, maritally speaking.

Alas, Belle’s eccentric father (Robb Paterson) gets lost in the woods and finds himself locked up in an enchanted castle by the Beast (Timothy Gledhill), who was subjected to a magical makeover when, in human form, he irked a passing enchantress.

The selfish, loveless prince was transformed and all his blameless servants are likewised cursed to serve as objects, including the candlestick Lumiere (Kevin Klassen), the motherly teapot Mrs. Potts (Laura Olafson), the sexy feather duster Babette (Paula Potosky) and the clock Cogsworth (Cory Wojcik).

When Belle tries to rescue her dad from imprisonment, she offers to take his place. The Beast agrees, and much to everyone’s sursprise, Belle comes to enjoy her magical surroundings.

Call it Stockholm Syndrome, Disney-style.

But back in the village, the scheming Gaston — assisted by a clearly lovelorn stooge named LeFou (Nelson Bettencourt) — hatches a plan to use Belle’s doddering dad to force her into marriage.

The stage is set for a battle between Gaston and the village people versus the Beast and his object army, with true love held in the balance.

So, yes, on the surface, it’s a big beauty of a musical, sure to please Rainbow’s fan base. On Thursday evening, the showstopper of showstoppers, Be Our Guest, got a standing ovation, a rarity when you consider it appears late in the first act.

The all-Manitoban cast acquits itself nicely, especially Sy, a beauty with a soaring, expressive voice and an undercurrent of steely resolve. Of the supporting cast, Bettencourt stands out as LeFou, a character who has undergone a subtextual overhaul since the 1991 B&B: LeFou is a beta male who is clearly crushing on his alpha buddy. Bettencourt plays it with great comic verve.

Still, the material could stand for a deeper overhaul, especially in the age of #MeToo. Even in 1991, the show was problematic in the way it played out a story of a woman who enters into a relationship with an abusive jerk with the belief she can change him — a recipe for disaster here in the real world.

Factoring in both the Beast and Gaston, this is a musical for which the term “toxic masculinity” might have been coined.

It’s not impossible to stage the show without addressing that. But, again, Beauty and the Beast is a very, very popular show, and an overhaul is highly unlikely, no matter how desperately it is required.

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Prior to the Thursday evening opening of Beauty and the Beast, Rainbow’s artistic director Carson Nattrass announced the company’s 2019 season — or at least half of it, in what should be considered his inaugural year. (The 2018 shows were chosen by Nattrass’s predecessor Ray Hogg.)

Nattrass said next year’s family-friendly August show wouldn’t be announced until January because of an agreement with the musical’s licence-holders. But Nattrass, true to his word that he would push for more Canadian content in Rainbow’s programming, announced the June 2019 show would be Strike: The Musical, by Danny Schur and Rick Chafe.

It will be the first Canadian musical in the company’s 63-year history. It is an especially apt choice because 2019 marks the 100-year anniversary of the musical’s subject matter, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.

A film musical based on the play commences shooting next week in Winnipeg.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing