Review: Northern Ballet’s Beauty and the Beast

Tuesday, 4th June 2024 at Leeds Grand Theatre

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Northern Ballet’s (returning) Beauty and the Beast brings the classic fairy tale to the stage in a stylish and playful production. With choreography, direction and costume from David Nixon CBE, music arrangements by John Longstaff and music beautifully performed live by the NB Sinfonia Orchestra (conductor: Daniel Parkinson), the story is brought to life with great feeling.

The bare bones of the tale are familiar to most: a vainglorious Prince rejects a beggar woman’s plea for kindness and in return is cursed when La Fèe Magnifique throws off her disguise to confront him. He loses his handsome appearance and is transformed into a beast, befitting his beastly behaviour; a rose and heart present one chance of salvation though, as the spell can be broken “if he can learn to love and be loved in return”. Beauty, an unwitting maiden elsewhere in the Kingdom will soon cross paths with this troubled soul…

True to form, Northern Ballet’s company is superb, taking audiences into a world far from their own. Jackson Dwyer’s Prince Orian wonderfully captures vanity in human form, offering a comic edge but nailing the imperiousness such privilege invites. Harris Beattie smoothly takes the reins, bringing us a Beast full of tormented angst, regret and frustration – before inspiring some laughs with table manners and melting hearts with his kind gestures.

Beauty is played – well, beautifully – in every sense of the word by Saeka Shirai, who communicates all her character’s fluctuating emotions with such clarity and depth of expression – particularly in the later delicate scenes as the tides turn.

The darkness and light of magical influences are well played through sisters La Fèe Magnifique (Abigail Prudames) who casts the curse and Le Fèe Luminaire (Dominique Larose) who offers hope for salvation. Both Prudames and Larose command the stage as every supernatural power should, and Nixon’s choreography provides all the right formations to bring appreciation to bold costume designs.

Meanwhile, comedy also lingers at the edges of scenes throughout, but the richest comedy is to be found in the fabulous physicality of the Goblins (Albert Gonzalez Orts, Jun Ishii, Aaron Kok, Yu Wakizuka) who work so seamlessly as one entity, and the gaudy, vapid sisters of Beauty (Aerys Merrill and Harriet Marden).

Highlights include those goblin marches and idyllic dreams, along with a fantastic sequence seeing a bunch of over-coiffured would-be suitors accost a disinterested Beauty at a ball (also providing a costuming highlight thanks to the heightened nature of the tailoring and colour palette). Musical highlights are also (naturally) many, with selections from Bizet and Debussy among others but opening with its strongest choice: Saint-Saëns’ gorgeous Danse Macabre.

As for set, the scale is grand and there’s some lovely symbolic value to Duncan Hayler’s designs, with rose and heart motifs running throughout in details large and small. Perhaps the most striking moments feature the oversized mirror used to torment the once heartless prince though, while Tim Mitchell’s lighting is at its most impactful during those harsh moments of anguish, moving to more gentle impressions for later moments and the celebratory finale.

There’s great heart, humour, energy and messaging in this tale and Northern Ballet have beautifully delivered on those layers with this production.

Beauty and the Beast is at Leeds Grand Theatre until 9th June 2024 as its final stop on tour. More information and tickets can be found here.