Beauty and the Beast

Jessica Grové as Belle and James Snyder as Beast perform in
“Beauty and the Beast,” produced by Music Circus
at the Wells Fargo Pavilion through July 2.
Charr Crail/Courtesy photo

 The folks at Music Circus would like to invite you to be their guest (for a fee) at the opulent production of Disney’s family classic musical, “Beauty and the Beast,” through July 2.

The near-capacity opening night audience had a lot of little princesses, tottering about on jeweled heels, in royal garb with rhinestone crowns.

This excellent production is directed by Glenn Casale and features several Broadway veterans in the lead roles and sumptuous costumes from Casale’s European tour of this show.

The production inaugurates California Musical Theatre’s new state-of-the-art projection system, a series of screens that circle the upper portion of the theater and project things like the rooftops of buildings, trees in a forest, and parts of a spooky castle, allowing for fewer on-stage set pieces and giving the audience a feeling of being in the action.

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe Broadway veteran James Snyder as the prince who is under the spell of a sorceress to whom he was once rude. He must live life as a hideous beast until he can learn to love another person and have that person love him in return.

A red rose charts his progress and if the last petal of the rose falls without a love interest in the picture, he will remain a beast forever.

Not only is the prince enchanted, but his entire house staff is as well. The maitre d’ has been turned into the candelabra Lumiere (Michael Paternostro) and the major domo is Cogsworth, a clock (David Hibbard), while Courtney Iventosch is Babette, the flirty feather duster, and Jacquelyn Piro Donovan is Madame de la Grande Bouche, the opera singer who is now a dresser, complete with drawers that open.

Dear Mrs. Potts (Shannon Warne), the teapot, sings the title song. Her son Chip (Cooper Miller, alternating with Mia Fisher) was very cute.

I was pleased to see that as the story progresses, the changes in the staff become more and more pronounced. I have seen community theater productions where this does not happen, so it was appreciated that this professional company follows those directions.

Jessica Grové is specializing in princesses at Music Circus. She was last seen as Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” and plays Belle in this production. Belle is a feisty loner and bookworm in the little town where she lives with her inventor father Maurice (Gordon Goodman). She dreams of finding an enchanted prince who will sweep her away.

After Maurice is set upon by wolves and saved by the Beast, who then imprisons him, Belle agrees to take his place if the Beast lets the old man go.

It’s a rocky start for this eventually happily-ever-after couple, but with help and lessons in being a gentleman from the house staff, the Beast is able to tame his temper and a friendship slowly develops between himself and the young woman. His anguished “If I Can’t Love Her,” which ends the first act, is a tour de force for the actor.

In the meantime, there is the town hunk, Gaston (Peter Saide), who is in love with himself, but determined to have Belle as his wife. His sidekick LeFou (Jared Gertner) thinks of this as a real bromance and puts up with a lot of abuse from this man he admires.

When Gaston leads a band to go and “kill the beast,” it is up to Belle to save this beast she has come to love and, in the process, break the spell.

This is a wonderful production and a great way to start Music Circus’ 67th season. If I have any complaint, it’s that the volume is much too high. I have hearing problems and it bothered me, so I can only imagine what a person with normal hearing would hear.