Theatre reviews: Beauty & The Beast | The Wizard of Oz
The first Christmas show at the Citz following its eight year refurbishment is a funny and fast-moving take on Beauty and the Beast, writes Joyce McMillan
The Wizard of Oz, Corn Exchange, Haddington ★★
It’s the first Christmas show at the Citizens’ in eight long years; and with the newly reopened theatre looking fabulous in its festive finery, the Citizens’ company rolls out a brilliant 21st-century take on Beauty And The Beast, as funny and fast-moving as it is spectacular.
In Lewis Hetherington’s brisk, witty and thoughtful script, Beauty and her sister Bright are the pretty one and the clever one, both pigeonholed by their wealthy old snob of a Dad, Baron Aaron. When poverty strikes, though, it soon becomes clear that there’s far more to Beauty than a pretty face, as she volunteers to replace her cowardly Dad as prisoner in the castle of the Beast, who emerges as a slightly poignant figure in brilliant turquoise fun-fur in Nicholas Marshall’s beguiling performance.
The story unfolds seriously enough, though, as the truth emerges about the terrible curse placed on the Beast. And there’s no resisting the sheer dramatic momentum of a tale that – at just over two hours including interval – never pauses even for a set-piece song; although it contains plenty of brilliant music and wild sound by Nikola Kodjabashia, and also makes room for a lavish dimension of not-quite-traditional audience participation, brilliantly alive and engaging throughout.
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Superbly co-directed by Dominic Hill and Joanna Bowman, the show features a wonderful Israela Efomi as Beauty, Holly Howden Gilchrist as Bright and Tyler Collins as the Baron, with a thrilling turn from Vanishing Point’s Elicia Daly as the wicked witch.
And alongside its strange and brilliant sounds, this Beauty And The Beast soars into some fabulous Harry-Potter-style visual effects as it races towards a clever and thoughtful conclusion that offers plenty of transforming magic, but also finally acknowledges the beast in us all.
Elsewhere in Scotland’s panto-sphere, it’s perhaps best to note that if you really are making a shapeless, slow-moving mess of keeping your story on track, and cracking many a badly timed and misfired joke along the way, then offering weak comic asides to the audience about just how terrible you are will not really improve matters much.
It’s hard to know exactly what has gone wrong with this year’s Brunton Theatre panto, after last year’s striking success with an East Lothian version of A Christmas Carol; perhaps the long strain of exile from its home at the doomed Brunton Halls is finally beginning to tell on a company that has worked so hard to stay active in the toughest circumstances.
Like last year’s show, this year’s Wizard of Oz boasts a script by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse of Wonder Fools, although this year without Nurse’s directing skills and Gordon’s stage presence; and it certainly offers the odd enjoyable moment, during what is often a painfully long and rambling two-and-a-half hours. There’s an attractive central performance from Caitlin Anderson as Dorothy, with strong support from Ben Cunningham’s lovable Scarecrow and Nicola Jo Cully’s Wicked Witch of the West.
There are also some impressive lighting and video effects, and plenty of traditional panto opportunities for the audience to join in, injecting some much-needed energy into the proceedings.
In the main, though, this is a story poorly told, in desperate need of some sharp editing and shaping. And it cannot be right to charge full professional panto prices for a show with such poor technical support that when Dorothy’s microphone failed in the second half, it simply stayed that way almost to the end, leaving her unheard by most of the audience. Chances are that this Wizard of Oz will look better by the time it arrives at Musselburgh’s Loretto Theatre next week; let’s hope so, for the sake of a theatre that deserves to survive its current difficult times.
Beauty And The Beast is at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow until 31 December. The Wizard of Oz is at the Corn Exchange, Haddington until 13 December, and at Loretto Theatre, Musselburgh, 19-27 December.
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