Beauty and the Beast – Harrogate Theatre

Writer: David Bown

Director: Marcus Romer

This Harrogate pantomime has all the ingredients that have made it an annual institution: a script by David Bown from an idea by the late Phil Lowe, Tim Stedman’s incomparable display of idiotic tomfoolery, Nick Lacey supplying an armament of musical and non-musical surprises from the pit, Marcus Romer carrying on the Phil Lowe directing tradition and so on. Yet somehow it doesn’t burst into life until during the second half.

Bown has taken the story’s French origins to heart, with Baron Bon Bon, an actor waiting for the phone to ring, his daughter Belle and Madame Bellie Fillop and her son Philllipe all working in the theatre cafe at Harrogatatte (complete with accent). The scene switches wildly between there, Paris and the Palace where the Prince sits, sadly deformed into the Beast by the wicked sorceress Mona Lisa for his offhand cruelty to a poor old lady (Mona Lisa, wouldn’t you know?). Perhaps the pantomime rattles through the story a bit quickly: by the interval the Beast and Belle are already sharing a dramatic love song, though we must wait for the actual transformation.

Tim Stedman (Phillipe) works his audience mercilessly, but his relationship with Harry Wyatt as the Dame (rather routine despite the exotic costumes) takes time to develop. As Baron Bon Bon Michael Lambourne skips his way through the first half without much to unleash his undoubted comic potential on and Joanne Sandi gets far and away the biggest response with the boos that welcome her grotesquely accented, soul-singing Mona Lisa. There’s plenty to enjoy (some neat magical tricks, for instance, or some good, well sung songs), but nothing to produce that madcap outburst of out-of-control hilarity that identifies a really good panto.

In the second half it’s probably the wild motorbike and sidecar ride through the dark dismal forest to the tune of a rock anthem that gets the show really rocking. The traditional “Let’s sing a song” sequence here sung to the tune of “L’Allouette” with the theatre ghost in attendance, is manic, with recurrent appearances by the talented young ladies of Team Rose (or Petal or Bud?). Their immaculate Can Can makes one realise how sadly underused they’d been in the first half – and gives Harry Wyatt his finest hour!

By now Stedman is in his element, Lambourne and Wyatt are having fun on the comic set pieces, and Anna Campkin’s forthright Belle and Colin Kiyani’s dignified Prince can enjoy the magic of his mid-air transformation.

Runs until January 19, 2025