BEAUTY AND THE BEAST by Charles Way. Manchester Library Theatre to 19 January.
Manchester
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
by Charles Way
Library Theatre To 19 January 2002
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS 0161 236 7110
Review Timothy Ramsden 4 January
Way joins Paterson and Lochhead in probing a classic story, resulting in more theatrical than dramatic panache.I've counted three new Charles Way Christmas plays this year, and judging by this Manchester piece it may be one too many. Though Roger Haines' Library Theatre production approaches theatrical triumph, Way's dramatic material often seems ill-digested.
His beauty is Belle, a fine heroine in Jessica Radcliffe's performance, and of course what Way is most interested in is her mind. He opens with her precognitive nightmare of the storm that wrecks her father's fleet. It's not the only reference to her inner vision, but the implications of this sixth sense fade. A strong theme at the beginning, it subsequently drains away.
Every sweet heroine needs a sour sister or two; Paterson gives us a pair of panto nasties, Lochhead a pretentious solo sibling. Way shows Cassandra as the older sister playing up to the dominant role – bigger, brighter, better-looking in her sister's eyes. Seen in flashback sneakily inducing arachnophobia in the young Belle with a box of spiders, in the present day she's given to brief apologetic moments before being dragged back under by her worst side.
She also suffers rural frustration, as the family move from metropolitan affluence – the script suggests Georgian London with mildly irritating knowingness – to poverty and exile in Devon, in the Gothic age when a magic castle on a remote moor was highly believable.
Emma Stansfield captures Cassandra's temper without exploring what lies behind her lapses into conscience. Anna Savva is sinister as Beast's housekeeper – though she's held in by the script's late, hurried and under-developed motivation for her character's vengefulness.
Kate Burnett's fine set, with its multiple openings in apparently solid walls (an image of Belle's mental perceptiveness), and Nick Richings' atmospheric lighting, help make this show visually striking. Yet Belle's ability to dart cross-country, arriving in the nick of time to save Beast with flowing blonde hair in place, and long white frock apparently untouched by moorland mud, robs the climax of her character's best feature: a rare spirit that's bedded in flesh and blood reality.
Belle: Jessica Radcliffe
Cassandra: Emma Stansfield
Daniel Knightley/Jan: Giles New
George Godwin: Simon Coury
Housekeeper: Anna Savva
Beast: Douglas Rankine
Shadow/Wolf: Georgina Lamb
Shadow/Wolf: Ross Fountain
Director: Roger Haines
Designer: Kate Burnett
Lighting: Nick Richings
Sound: Paul Gregory
Choreographer: Liam Steel
Musical Director: Richard Taylor
2002-01-16 00:17:08