Premiering on
April 18 ,
1994 , '' is currently one of
Broadway 's longest running productions, devised and produced by
Disney Theatrical , a fully owned subsidiary of
The Walt Disney Company .
One cold
Winter's night, an
Ugly old woman stumbles up to a
Prince's castle. She begs the prince for
Shelter from the cold, though she has only a single
Rose to give him as payment. Being selfish and heartless, the prince refuses her, simply because she is ugly. The old woman warns him that true beauty is within one's heart, not one's appearance. The prince refuses again and the woman reveals herself to be a powerful
Enchantress and, as punishment to the
Cruel and
Selfish prince, she transforms him into a
Beast . The
Servant s in the castle are also transformed; they become tea cups, candles, items of furniture, and other household items. His castle becomes scary; the cherubs become gargoyles. This spell can only be broken if the beast learns to love another and receives her love in return. However, this must happen before the last petal of the enchantress's rose withers and falls, or he will remain a beast forever. As the years go by, The Beast falls into a depression, quickly becoming angry, as he wonders who could ever love a hideous monster.
The "beauty" of the title, a girl called
Belle , lives with her father Maurice in a small
French Village . Maurice is known for his
Rube Goldberg -type
Inventions ; the townspeople note Belle's beauty, but consider her odd because of her passion for books (most women, at the time, were believed to have to be brainless, in a sense, as quoted by Gaston in the line "It's not right for a woman to read. Soon, she starts getting ideas and thinking..."). Her beauty has attracted the attentions of local
Hunter and
Bodybuilder Gaston , but Belle considers him 'rude and conceited', and ignores him.
One day, Maurice decides to take his latest invention to a
Fair outside the village. On the way, he gets lost in the
Woods .
Wolves chase him, and his horse Phillipe bucks him off in
Fright and
Fear . Maurice runs blindly through the woods and eventually comes to the beast's castle. The servants of the castle, still in the form of various household objects, look after him. That is, until the beast arrives. The beast has Maurice locked up as a
Prison er for what he considers as "
Trespassing ".
Belle, back in the village, politely but firmly resists Gaston's offer of
Marriage . Gaston explains to Belle that she is going to be his "little
Wife ", have 6 or 7 handsome males ("strapping boys", to quote the character) like himself, and makes a number of other
Chauvinist ic comments. She is astonished later to find her father's horse without its master. She traces her way to the castle with her father's
Horse . Once there, she offers to take the place of her father as the Beast's prisoner; and the Beast agrees and sends Maurice back. Maurice tries to tell people back in the town what has happened to Belle, but the villagers, including Gaston, think him insane and rebuff him, so he decides to set off to get her back on his own.
Beast, realizing that she could break the spell, allows Belle to have her own room and permits her to enter anywhere in the castle she likes, except the West Wing - the Beast's old room where he stayed as a human. However, he has lost whatever kindness was left after his transformation, and orders the other servents not to feed Belle when he fails to have her with him for dinner. Belle, still sad after losing her father forever, doesn't want anything to do with the Beast.
At the castle, the various dishes and accessories, including
Lumiere the candlestick and
Cogsworth the mini-clock, entertain their guest with a fancy French dinner and all the comforts a team of servants can provide (after the Beast orders them not to when he tried forcing Belle to come down to dinner with him). They are, of course, eager for Belle and the Beast to fall in love, so they can be turned human again. Unfortunately for them, Belle and the Beast don't get along very well (due to the chauvinism he is expliciting on her) and are constantly at each other's throats.
Having a tour of the castle, Belle curiously enters a passage she has never been in before, the forbidden West Wing. The room basically describes the Beast's sadness, with broken mirrors and a ripped-up picture of his human form. Entranced by the enchanted rose, she moves to take it, but the Beast returns upsetting her in his fury. She quickly leaves the castle, only coming across more wolves in the forest, leaving the Beast her only defender. As time goes by, Belle and the Beast eventually fall in love and over the following days the Beast becomes more human, showing more kindness as Belle 'sees a side of him she never saw before'. When he gives her a magic mirror that will show her anything she wishes to see, she requests to see her father and sees him sick and dying, as he foolishly tried to reenter the castle to bring her back. The Beast, in his love for her, does what he think is right and releases her to go rescue him, and she takes him back to their house in the village. However, Gaston arrives with a
Lynch Mob to take Maurice to the
Asylum unless Belle agrees to marry him. Eager to prove her father sane, she ends up showing them an image of the Beast with the magic mirror.
Enraged and feeling betrayed, Gaston convinces the mob that the Beast is a threat and menace to the
Community and leads the mob to the castle to pillage it, rallying with the cry, "kill the Beast." Most of the mob is fought and driven off by the enchanted artifacts of the castle, but Gaston reaches the Beast and begans to fight with him, though the Beast, disheartened with a belief that Belle will never come back, doesn't fight back until Belle shows up. However as the Beast is about to finish off Gaston, he realises he can no longer find it in himself to kill anyone. As the Beast and Belle are reunited, Gaston stabs the Beast in the back with a dagger, however Gaston loses his footing on the roof and tumbles to from the castle. After Gaston is gone (whether or not he is actually dead remains unknown), Belle tells the Beast she loves him, and the spell is broken. The Beast turns into a handsome prince again, the scary castle becomes beautiful again (the gargoyles turn back into cherubs), and the enchanted artifacts of the castle are turned back into people.
- The show debuted on Broadway in 1994, three years after the release of the movie. It is currently the longest running American musical on Broadway, the sixth longest running show in Broadway history, and has played nearly 5,000 performances. The show's world premiere was at Houston's Theatre Under The Stars in November, 1993.
- The idea for the show came about from a particularly popular 25 minute-long Broadway-style performance of the film at Disneyland which opened in 1992 and a similar show at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park which opened concurrent to the film.
- The Broadway show features a new expanded script and brand new songs by Alan Menken and Tim Rice, who also wrote the lyrics for Disney's Aladdin.
- The show has been performed on London 's prestigious West End , as well as Sydney , Tokyo , Mexico City , Seoul , Paris , Toronto , Berlin and Weston, MA .
- To make the characters of the Enchanted Objects believable on stage, their transformation storylines were changed. Instead of changing them immediately into objects, they are slowly but surely losing their humanity. If the spell is not broken before the last petal falls, they will fully become whatever object they are supposed to be.
- The feather duster and wardrobe characters of the film were given names and more fully developed characterizations. Linda Woolverton, who wrote the book of the musical as well as the film's screenplay, named the feather duster maid Babette and the wardrobe Madame de la Grande Bouche. It was the first time these supporting characters were ever named.
- In the past few years, Disney has begun to lease the rights for performing the show to traveling theatrical companies, and now the show is performed all over North America and Europe (although Disney will not allow the show to be performed within 50 miles of New York City). In addition, Beauty and the Beast has become the most commonly performed show performed by community theatrical groups.
Academy Award -winning
Composer Alan Menken wrote the music for both the original film as well as new songs added to the production.
Howard Ashman provided the lyrics for the film, and
Tim Rice took over as
Lyricist of the Broadway production as a result of Ashman's death of
AIDS in
1991 . Portions of some of the show's most popular numbers – "Belle," "Something There," "Beauty and the Beast," "A Change in Me," and "Be Our Guest" – were included in the
2004 touring
Musical Revue ''
On The Record ''.
- Prologue†
- Belle
- No Matter What---
- No Matter What (Reprise)---
- Me---
- Belle (Reprise)
- Home---
- Home (Reprise)---
- Gaston
- Gaston (Reprise)
- How Long Must This Go On?---
- Be Our Guest
- If I Can't Love Her---
- Entr'acte/Wolf Chase
- Something There
- Human Again
--
- Maison des Lunes---
- Beauty and the Beast
- If I Can't Love Her (Reprise)---
- A Change in Me‡
- The Mob Song
- The Battle
- Transformation
- Beauty and the Beast (Reprise)
- These songs written for the musical.
- --- "Human Again" was orginally written for, but eventually cut from the film. It was later animated and edited into the film for its 2002 IMAX and Special Edition DVD releases.
†The
Narration of the dialogue in the
Prologue , instead of a live performance, is a
Recording played at the beginning of every Broadway and touring production of
David Ogden Stiers , who provided the voices of the Narrator and Cogsworth in the film.
‡"A Change in Me" was included in neither the film or the original Broadway production. Menken and Rice wrote the song for
Grammy Award -winning
R&B singer
Toni Braxton when she entered the role of Belle in
1998 . The song has been included in all performances since. Broadway's original Belle
Susan Egan covered the song on her
2002 album ''So Far...''
