Fine efforts in Warwick theatre’s stirring production

[dutchman]

Beauty and the Beast by the Playbox Theatre Company.



ANOTHER Christmas, another sparkling panto from Playbox’s wonderful crop of young stage stars.

Emily Jane Quash’s production is a seasonal, heart-warming love story, with Abbie Wyatt-Smith’s Beauty and Jeremy Franklin’s Beast getting it on amid snowy forests and an atmospheric, candlelit magic palace. Dance plays a major part, with Lily Hall’s Witch a particular highlight of a fine ensemble effort.

There are scenes containing mild peril (as the film censors call it these days), but nothing to unduly alarm the younger audience members. And while it’s not wall-to-wall gags there are plenty of comic moments, the best of them supplied by Cora James as Beast’s Man and Izzie James’ Veronique, Beauty’s ghastly older sister.

Overall the tone is spot-on. Beast’s lines include a few ‘Me-Tarzan-you-Jane’ gruntings, but he’s still a convincing, sympathetic character. Charlotte Merriam does sterling work as Beauty’s daft but doting father and ‘his’ sons and daughters all do themselves proud too.

There’s always a market for B-list celebs making fools of themselves in our bigger provincial theatres at this time of year. Thankfully there’s also room for stirring stuff like this too. Long may it continue.

Simon Steele