Evolution Productions returns to the Sheffield Lyceum with a sparkling performance of Beauty and the Beast.
The format is familiar and popular sequences retained, but there are new ideas, brilliant costumes and a talented cast which reaches out to the many children in the audience and has them laughing with pleasure and joining in whenever possible.
Damian Williams is back for his sixteenth year as the Dame with his big stage presence, booming voice, mobile and expressive face, domination of the audience and, of course, the outrageous frocks. The biggest laugh of the night went to a sequence including a member of the audience when Damian planted the idea of a comic action without needing to perform it. I was impressed by the subtlety of his control. Clever stuff!
The production brings together an accomplished group of principal actors. Bessy Ewa, at the beginning of her career, is a delightful and beautiful Belle with a range of appropriate performance skills. Duncan James plays Danton, who would like to be Belle's suitor, as a particularly vain fop. His comic timing is a delight.
The principal actors have a wide range of skills and experience drawn from the pop scene, work on CBeebies, stage and TV performance and stand-up comedy. Jennie Dale as Cupid is the fairy who communicates with the children, while Max Fulham as Fillop becomes the children's 'friend' who entertains them with ventriloquism and puppetry.
We don't see much of Aidan Banyard's face until the end of the show when he takes of his mask as villain and is transformed into a prince. Aidan's strong performance as the Beast is enhanced by mime and effective physicality and a distorted voice reminiscent of Dr Who.
Set and costume design is credited to a large team of creatives led by Morgan Large for set, Ella Haines and Amy Chamberlain for costume and Michael J Batchelor for the Dame costumes.
An outstanding scene takes place in the Beast's Castle when we meet victims of the Beast who have been transformed into objects. So, we see the singers and dancers in the company transformed into a cup, a teapot, a candelabra and much more. Really impressive creative skills revealed here.
Singing and dancing (choreographer Sara Langley) performed by the whole cast is dynamic and exciting throughout, and the dance team have a number of additional roles as the action proceeds. The movement of the masked wolves is particularly effective and the masks themselves convincingly scary.
It is not often that a pantomime has such a clear contemporary message as the one presented by Belle in this production. She urges people not to judge others on their external appearance but on what they are like beneath the surface. Conversely, she urges the Beast to suppress his tendency to be cruel and unpleasant to others and search for the goodness in himself.
Much credit to Paul Hendy as writer, director and producer. The chemistry really worked!