Martha Leebolt as Beauty and Ashley Dixon as the Beast in Northern Ballet’s Beauty & the Beast. Photo by Jason Tozer
This has been a fantastic year for theatre in our city so it was fitting that Northern Ballet ended 2011 with a spectacular version of Beauty of the Beast.
It has been a tough year for all of us – including the company who took a 25% cut from this government of philistines – so full marks to them for producing a show full of optimism and flamboyance.
This world première opens with the vain Prince Orian – beautifully played by the ever reliable Kenneth Tindall – preening himself in front of a mirror with his equally hideous acolytes sucking up to him. Imagine the cretins from The Only Way Is Essex and you have an idea of his tantastic self satisfaction.
But as this is a classic fairytale then lo and behold a fairy pops up to transform him into a beast as punishment for his overweening vanity.
Meanwhile Beauty – Martha Leebolt displaying just the right hint of saccharine – is at home with her weak willed father and shopaholic sisters – in suitably over the top costumes – filling their house with a pile of designer goodies from Zarrods.
The sisters – played for laughs by Georgina May and Pippa Moore – are mad overspenders, and before we know it the bailiffs are loading their worldly goods into a very creaky van that lurches out from stage left.
This wouldn’t be a classic Northern Ballet performance without choreographer David Nixon making a point in the midst of all the fluff. I liked the fact he is prepared to mock wannabes like thick Amy Child, and the other tanned morons from down south, as well as our rampant consumerism.
The family are then left in the forest in only their underwear fening d for themselves where daddy dearest gives Beauty to the Beast tosave his own skin. The crux of this story is how the naïve Beauty falls in love with the Beast and thus frees him from his curse.
Ashley Dixon is absolutely riveting, agilely capturing the frustration of a man in beast’s body who is love with this ravishing creature in his lair. The pas de trio where he gambols hopelessly round Beauty and his alter ego the Prince, is both heartbreaking and precisely danced.
This is a traditional show where the female dancers are en pointe, and some of the lifts and jumps are wonderfully athletic. But at heart this is a classic love story so there is plenty of fluff, magnificent costumes by Julie Anderson and crazy sets.
The final wedding scene in a gloriously bizarre neon gilded church shows off the technical excellence of the company and is as camp as Christmas.
After a miserable year for many of us it was a pleasure to just sit back and soak up a sumptuous bit of escapism, with just a hint of steel. It is the perfect show to see before Christmas setting up the whole audience for a joyful Yuletide.
- Beauty & the Beast, Leeds Grand Theatre until Saturday 31 December.
- Box Office: 0844 848 2701, book Online: www.leedsgrandtheatre.com.
- Tickets: £10 – £39.50, Family tickets £100 (max 2 adults)