Aba A Luke

On Ju­ly 2, a mu­si­cal pro­duc­tion of Dis­ney's Beau­ty & The Beast proved sen­sa­tion­al. Those who'd gath­ered at the Queen's Hall in St Ann's were of­fered a pro­fes­sion­al­ly thrilling dis­play of mu­si­cal en­er­gy and seam­less act­ing by the cast and crew of the Fes­ti­val Arts Chorale's fifth an­niver­sary pro­duc­tion.

From its 7 pm start, au­di­ence mem­bers, many of who com­prised young chil­dren and their par­ents, were re­moved from the or­di­nary world of which we all con­duct our dai­ly lives, and sent to a far, far away land where teacups spoke, a can­dle-stand called Lu­miere cra­dled the heart of a young French feath­er duster, and a young girl named Belle would come to love a Beast who'd been dealt a spell at the hands of an en­chantress.

The sto­ry of Beau­ty and the Beast re­mained the same, but with a lo­cal cast which in­clud­ed the in­cred­i­bly tal­ent­ed Tra­maine Lamy as Belle, Mar­lon De Bique as Gas­ton and Jonathan Mor­gan as the Beast, the the­atri­cal mu­si­cal per­for­mance be­came a de­pic­tion of what all lo­cal pro­duc­tions should strive to be.

Set in a provin­cial French Vil­lage, the sto­ry of Beau­ty and the Beast is tru­ly an en­chant­i­ng one, as many would agree. It starts off with a spell be­ing cast up­on the prince and his cas­tle-hands and me­an­ders along through var­i­ous scenes, one of which is Belle's en­trance to the set. Lamy, whose voice and act­ing abil­i­ty cou­pled to cre­ate the most be­liev­able cast mem­ber in the mu­si­cal, first ap­peared to the au­di­ence singing about a book she'd read, lead­ing the vil­lage folk to call her strange.

Next en­ters Gas­ton, the town's male heart­throb who's set on mar­ry­ing Belle, much to the dis­gust of the women who ador­ing­ly fol­low him. And so it goes, through the var­i­ous scenes, from Belle's fa­ther, Mau­rice, played by Mar­vin Dowridge be­ing wel­comed in­to the cas­tle by Lu­miere and Mrs Potts, then cast away in­to a dun­geon by the an­gry beast who'd for­bid­den the en­try of any­one from out­side the cas­tle's walls.

The mu­si­cal, in every sense of its pro­duc­tion, proved ex­cel­lent. The cast mem­bers, stage-hands, in­stru­men­tal ac­com­pa­ni­ment, chore­og­ra­phy, cos­tum­ing and all oth­er nec­es­sary ar­eas that worked to re-en­act the 1740's clas­sic, had to have in­voked a huge sense of pride among lo­cal na­tion­als. The Louis McWilliams di­rect­ed pro­duc­tion ran through Ju­ly 5 and tru­ly made for a won­der­ful night out with the fam­i­ly.