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2019 in Review (and a little bit from 2020)

A big thank you to everyone who has been following this blog through its first (calendar) year!  This project has been great for me personally; I’ve seen a lot more shows than I was making it to before, and I’m starting to recognize names and faces in different places, which is a fun benefit.  In 2020 I hope to review more shows and improve my process so that it doesn’t take me quite so long to write each post. I’ve already got a few winter shows lined up, so I’m excited to get back into it.

There were some shows in 2019 that I saw but didn’t review for the blog, and holiday travel (plus an overly ambitious crafting project) kept me from writing full reviews of the two versions of Beauty and the Beast that I saw in November and December.  There are one or two details, though, that I couldn’t let go of, and so I’m going to give a few highlights from both of those productions.

Can I assume that everyone knows the plot of Beauty and the Beast? Belle lives with her father in a small, provincial French village. He gets lost in the woods and ends up at a mysterious castle inhabited by a fierce beast and his servants, who were all turned into household objects after the beast was unkind to an enchantress. The beast holds Belle's father captive until she offers herself in his place. The castle's spell will break if the beast can fall in love and be loved--but time is running out.

The cartoon version of Beauty and the Beast is beloved by many, and the stage musical added extra songs but mostly stuck to the film. It's a show with beautiful music, emotional scenes, humor, and the opportunity for cute children to dance around dressed as teacups and salt shakers. And for the youngest audience members, it's an opportunity to see Belle in person.

That said, for me this musical hasn’t aged very well.  My first issue is that there's so little information about who Belle is--her defining characteristics are liking books, not liking Gaston, and having a village think she's beautiful but peculiar.  (Surely she's not the only one around who likes books if the village can support a bookshop that Belle isn't even paying money to!) What does Belle do besides read? What are her actual characteristics and interests?  If the only person in town she likes is her eccentric inventor father, why doesn't she go with him to meet up with other eccentric inventors?? Compared to the modern Disney princesses, Belle really needs to get a life.  (Moana, for example, loves the sea but also teaches dance lessons, solves architectural problems, and participates in village decision-making. How can Belle compete?)

Beauty and the Beast also misses the mark sometimes as a show whose audience is largely small children.  There are several emotional songs with no action that I would have found very boring as a child. And so much time is spent on Lumiere and Babette's relationship, in which they toy with others to make each other jealous--a situation that seems too adult for a five-year-old.  I think it's there because it's a stereotype of French life, but today this relationship seems emotionally immature and dated. The other French stereotype that I take issue with is the can-can, a dance with a very mature history. While I understand that the dance looks impressive, having the can-can in the show's script is something that makes me wonder again if the writers forgot that this was for children. If you think I'm overreacting, maybe I am. But you may also want to read the Wikipedia page about the can-can: "Often the main feature observed today is how physically demanding and tiring the dance is to perform, but it still retains a bawdy, suggestive element."  So there.

Those complaints out of the way, here are some things that stood out to me in the productions I saw.


Beauty and the Beast, Ashland Productions

Erin Belpedio’s lighting design was fantastic; the lighting techniques were vastly different from one setting to another and added a lot to the tone of the village, castle, woods, etc.  I can't think of another production I've seen where some scenes just used completely different lights (the village and woods were lit from above, but the castle walls were lit from below). The costumes were another feature of this production that really impressed me. Designers Meredith Arbuckle and Jessica Hughes combined prints in beautiful ways to create looks that felt historical and lush.

The main castle servants, played by Lewis Youngren (Lumiere), Adrian Ogimachi (Cogsworth), and Denise Mogren (Mrs. Potts) had a lovely chemistry and banter together and brought out much of the humor in the show. Ashland’s production made excellent use of dance under choreographer Alyssa Schorr, including having dancers be the rose and mirror.  It was captivating and suspenseful each time the rose (Calista Hughes) entered and gracefully dropped a petal. I also got a real kick out of seeing actors, in the noble theatrical tradition, be a table or a door. It makes sense that a door might be a person! It's also very funny to watch an actor stand around in a door costume.


Beauty and the Beast, Chaska Valley Family Theatre

As she did as Ariel in MPP’s The Little Mermaid earlier in the year, Brie Stole brought a real sense of melancholy to Belle.  This didn’t always fit smoothly with the more cartoony aspects of the story, but I think it’s an interesting direction to go.  As I said, there's not enough in the script to make Belle feel realistic or to invest the audience in her journey, but the implication that Belle's position in town has left her feeling profoundly isolated and unhappy does make me root for her life to change. Quinn Forrest Masterson was excellent as the beast and played to the larger-than-life tone of his character very well.  As a bonus, I was gratified by a sound system that let Quinn get almost too loud, a quality I want at the biggest emotional crescendo of almost every show (though I am frequently disappointed).  A little in-your-face sound makes a feel production feel like a bigger, more physical experience.

Michael Wesley brought a lot of power to the role of Gaston, bringing out the character's (seemingly harmless) charisma in the first act and his (definitely harmful) sinisterness in the second. Rachel Perry played the asylum boss, Madame d'Arque (usually a Monsieur) as a different kind of creepy (unsettling, sometimes witchy), in a very fun take on the role. Another intriguing aspect of this production was the fight choreography by Beau Jorgensen. The two scenes with the wolves, attacking either Maurice or Belle and the Beast, were very compelling and had a cool blend of dance and fighting.

Other recent theater

It's never been my intention to review youth shows, in the first place because I don't think it's fair to compare them to adult shows and in the second because I find it hard to stay impartial, especially if I know any of the children.  However, I will mention a few details about the shows I saw recently.

Lakeshore Players Theatre put on Seussical Jr. at the beginning of this year with a combined child/adult cast.  The set was fun and colorful, and I especially liked the way the flower patch was worked in; it worked well for the particular scene where Horton looks for his speck of dust, and it defined the "Who" space throughout the show.  The sound quality was also a nice feature in this play; the cast was appropriately mic'd and it was easy to hear everyone. Mayzie the Bird was played rather racier than I expected, but I may be extra sensitive (see above).

Also in January I saw Young Artists Initiative's production of Frozen Jr., which had an entirely child/teen cast.  What stood out here is the effort they made to engage with the audience throughout. The artistic director came out and spoke to the audience multiple times before the show, and after the show cast members participated in a talk-back and answered some questions submitted by the audience.  The talk-back, which focused on the actors' experiences and characters in the play, is a sweet idea for this age level. The actors certainly enjoyed it and no one in the audience seemed to mind. In the show itself, I really enjoyed the way dancers depicted snow and Elsa's magic. And the set design featured rotating set pieces, which are always a favorite of mine.

Final Thoughts

From all the shows I saw in the past year, one or two things have stuck with me. For example, after seeing Freaky Friday, I have thought a lot about the expression "Chekov's gun." Playwright Anton Chekov famously said that if a gun is displayed in the first act of a play, the gun should be fired by the end of the play. My question is, which most triggers a sense of expectation from a modern audience: a rifle hanging on the wall, or an overly large or extravagant wedding (or birthday) cake? From the instant Chekov's cake appeared in Freaky Friday, I was waiting for it to be destroyed. Maybe it's time to update our vocabulary?

Regular reviews are returning after this post. If you want to suggest an upcoming show, click on the drop-down menu (in the top right of the page) and use the form there to contact me. You can also subscribe to this blog by clicking the link at the top of the page. Happy 2020!

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