I waited to catch Halifax’s Shakespeare by the Sea’s Season Opener at a free presentation at the city’s acclaimed Main Library Performance Space, the Paul O’Reagan Hall.
The cavernous indoor space was packed with enthusiastic fans: kids, families, adults, seniors. Everybody revelled in this innovative, funny and raucous original re-interpretation of the Beauty and Beast story, so effectively told by the likes of artistic giants like Disney and Jean Cocteau.
Book author Dan Bray begins with an off-beat but immediately grabby premise. The scene we set out with is a dating-style game show that hopes to match characters from Grimm’s Tales—Rapunzel, Snow White and Cinderella—with the Beast. On set are the Grimm Brothers themselves as directors. They resemble Germanic authoritarian filmmakers like Otto Preminger and Fritz Lang. Played with pointed accents and Teutonic command by Burgundy Code and Matt Lacas, the duo are both funny and terrifying; their comments about social media, however, are spot on.
The rest of the cast—especially Patrick Jeffery as a smug, rubbery Prince Charming played almost as a parody, and you get to know why towards the end of the play—are gleefully silly but almost always delightful. There are so many turnarounds throughout that the characters all seem in on the joke well before the jokes are delivered. And when characters like Prince Charming change into other characters, they change right in front of your eyes, making the transformation concrete and visually engrossing; astonishing, even.
What really marks this production is the extraordinary costuming by April Beattie. There are cast members dressed convincingly as: one, a film camera; two, a boom microphone; three, a lighting tower complete with barn doors; and finally, a clapping board. If ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was re-created self-consciously as an absurdist comedy set on a film or TV set, you might get the idea of the visual impact.
As the Fairy Tale Dating Game narrative moves forward, it turns out that it is a reality TV show that has been capturing the action, even as—spoiler alert—the three female fairy-tale characters leave the show to live together, starting their new same-sex lives with, naturally, a trip to IKEA.
The audience literally let out a roar at that joke, cheering on the characters.
This barely scratches the surface of the inspired madness and relentless deconstruction that goes on within the narrative of this particular Beauty and the Beast. With Garry Williams’ bouncy songs and several staged pieces—one a gliding sequence and another a tango-a-thon disguised as a dating game challenge—that represent some of Shakespeare By the Sea’s very finest work ever, the show takes flight and almost never comes down until the final few moments. It’s a stellar production from beginning to end.
Developed through the PARC (Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre), Beauty and the Beast marries SBTS’s trademark sense of fun, irreverence and wild energy with Dan Bray and Garry Williams’ precise writing.
While there are sometimes a few too many ideas flying around at any one point in the play, there’s no question that Beauty and the Beast might just be the most imaginative piece of theatre you will encounter in Halifax for some time.
Presented at Paul O’Reagan Hall at the Halifax Main Library on August 8 by Shakespeare by the Sea (Usually presented outdoors at Point Pleasant Park).
Book by Dan Bray; music and lyrics by Garry Williams.
Playwright: Dan Bray
Director: Jesse MacLean
Costume Designer: April Beattie
Music Arrangements: Josh Cruddas
Choreographer: Jade Douris O’Hara
Production Designer: Brenda Duran
Production Assistants: Schuyler Edgar Holmes&Tal Koubi
The production runs to August 29. For tickets: (902) 422-0295 or email info@shakespearebythesea.ca.
Director: Jesse MacLean
Design Intern: Hope MacPherson
Apprentice Stage Manager: Giovanna Musial
Musical Director/Associate Production Designer: Shanoa Phillips
Production Stage Manager: Kate Reading
Composer/Lyricist: Garry Williams
