By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
“Beauty and the Beast” really has two beasts.
Yes, there’s the enchanted prince turned into a gruesome beast confined to an enchanted castle. Then there’s the everyday handsome and cocky neighborhood beast, who knows no limits to getting his way.
There is only one beauty, Belle, the eccentric inventor’s daughter, who is happy to have her beautiful face buried in a book. That doesn’t keep her from being pursued by both the beasts.
The 3B Productions’ staging of the Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast: The New Musical” has a beauty of a Belle in Maggie Titus. As she’s shown earlier this year in the BGHS production of “Legally Blond,” she has pipes. Her voice proves to be the North Star that guides this “Beauty and the Beast” to its happily-ever-after finale.
“Beauty and the Beast” is on stage tonight (Thursday, July 21), Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Maumee Indoor Theatre, 601 Conant St., Maumee. Click for tickets. The teen production features performers from 15 area high schools, including several, including Titus, from Bowling Green.
Beauty can’t shine without those beastly storm clouds.
First there’s Gaston (Abraham Nixon), the village’s self-absorbed heart throb. Captivated by Belle’s physical attractiveness and oblivious to her intelligence and inner beauty, he has determined to marry Belle, much to the dismay of the gaggle of silly girls (Whitney Bechstein, Rose Walters, Ellasyn Brookens, Riley Higgins, Rylie Kregel, and Jordan Miller). She’s the most beautiful female in town and he is the beautiful male. A perfect couple – like his thighs – to produce a line of strapping boys in his image. She’s disinterested to say the least, disgusted really, by the prospect.
But as he confides to his hapless sidekick aptly named Le Fou (the fool) by with great comic timing by Gavin Miller, he will not be deterred.
Not that the townsfolk haven’t already determined that Belle is odd, and her father an inventor Maurice (Maximilian Zajac) is even stranger.
This provincial town is a prison for Belle, and she seeks escape through the books. Of course, when she actually leaves her home and finds herself confined in an actual fairy tale castle she longs left in the song “Is This Home?”
In this castle she encounters the Beast of the title. Played by Kyle Feeback, this Beast was a spoiled brat of a prince, whose rude behavior to an enchantress (Brookens) disguised as a beggar woman testing his hospitality, has himself and his entire household under a spell that requires the usual fairy tale Rx involving true love. He’s a beast, and still a brat; and the help are transformed into household items. This animated collection of yard sale items are the true heroes of this play.
Led by the candelabra, Lumiere (Evan Zorz), and the clock, Cogsworth (Bart Reamer), the household staff unlike the Beast, who didn’t learn the lesson from the enchantress, do their best to make Belle feel at home. They have as much at stake as the Beast. They are becoming more and more like objects as time goes on. Time, in the form of a rose, is ticking away.
The performers each do well embodying their character.
Lumiere is the life and light of the party leading the big production number “Be Our Guest.” And while he and the rest are cavorting, Cogsworth, who is wound too tight, tries to put a lid on the festivities.
“Not the kick number,” he exclaims as party reaches its climax.
Peyton Burnor as Ms. Potts does a fine job delivering the title song. Ava DuBois plays her child Chip.
Brooke Dove displays a fine voice that gets limited use as the opera singer turned into the Wardrobe. And Emma Majewski has fun as the coquettish Babette.
They, more than the Beast himself, are responsible for the courting of Belle.
By the end of the act the Beast is left heartbroken singing “If I Can’t Love Her.” Feeback has just a fitting touch of gruffness to his voice as Beast but in the end after his character’s transformation, his voice rings clear.
At this point, there are no more beasts, and beauty reigns.
