Review: Beauty and The Beast at Liverpool Empire

One of Disney's classics has to be the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast which is currently showing at the Liverpool Empire Theatre.

Performed by the Birkenhead Operatic Society Trust (BOST), this love story had the audience gripped from start to finish.

Set in a small French village, the tale follows the life of Belle, a very pretty young girl who lives with her inventor father Maurice. The people in the town think that Belle is a bit odd as she has a love of books.

After her father goes missing in the woods, Belle decides that she must go and find him, to her dismay, Belle finds her father locked in the dungeon of a castle belonging to a prince who was put under a spell by an old beggar woman who came to him looking for shelter.

Denying her welcome, she turned him into a beast, bound to live isolated in his castle, he can only see the outside world though a magical mirror. His servants were also turned into household objects until he could prove that he could change his ways and find somebody to love and win her love in return - before the last petal falls from the magic rose.

Belle convinces the Beast that she will take the place of her father and promises to stay with him in the castle as long as her father can return to his home in the village.

The villagers think that Belle's father is mad when he tells them that his daughter is being kept in the castle by a beast

When the beast is aggressive towards Belle she tries to escape, finding herself surrounded by wolves in the woods, until the beast comes to her rescue.

After fighting off the wolves, Belle thanks the beast for saving her life and it is then that this pretty young woman sees a different side to his character.

Belle starts to fall in love with him and the beast finally agrees to grant Belle her freedom to return to her father in the village and gives her the magical mirror so that she can look at him whenever she is missing him.

On her return to the village, Belle is horrified to find that the villagers are being cruel to her father about the beast, she then produces the magic mirror and shouts 'Show me the Beast'.

To the horror of the villagers, the mirror reveals the beast and the villagers fronted by Gaston (a self-centered and masculine hunter who wanted Belle to be his wife but she refused him) gather the hunters and decide to kill the beast.

The angry hunters storm the castle looking for the beast and while fighting, Gaston stabs the beast.

The only way to save the beast from dying is Belle's love. While he is lying on the ground, Belle finally tells the beast that she loves him and while the stage is covered in smoke and fireworks, the beast turns into Prince Charming.

As in all fairytales they all live happy ever after, if only real life was that good.

The cast were amazing, Laura Coard played Belle with an outstanding singing voice, encapsulating the part really well. The beast or, as I would rather call him, Prince charming was played by Gareth Casey-Morris, again he played a fantastic role.

We were entertained by the usual suspects in this production, Mrs Potts, Little Chip, Cosgworth, Lumiere and one of the best parts for me was Mrs Potts' spine tingling version of the Beauty and the Beast.

Credit has to go to every single member of the cast who performed such an amazing amateur production of this classic fairytale. To think that we have such talented enthusiastic people in our area who can perform such a brilliant production, in addition to holding down their own jobs, is staggeringly impressive.

If I have to make a negative point about this show, and only a small one it would be that in part, the singing was a touch too loud, especially the ladies.

9/10 - Beauty and the Beast is showing at the Liverpool Empire until 14th May 2011

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