La bella y la bestia: una celebración número 30

Would you rather watch the original Disney animated classic or would you rather watch portions of it, interrupted by commercials, live action sequences that are more about new choreography than the musical performances, interspersed with brief pieces about the creation and development of the orignal, perhaps accented with pop-up ads and scrolls on the bottom of the screen?

Some of the new performers are great talents. If only their talents were showcased better...and they were not lip synching!

In recent years we have been spoiled by some incredible live re-creations of musical classics that make this production suffer in comparison.

This is obviously mostly a vehicle to showcase how progressive ABC and Disney have become through the casting of H. E. R as Belle. H. E. R. delivers here, using the "R" in her acronym to reveal her beautiful eyes, shedding her edgy persona to temporarily become a Disney princess, and she is a great sport at it. Her exotic looks and exotic voice give Belle the texture we need in 2022. And as a bonus, H. E. R gives us a taste of her electric guitar skills at the end which is a nice surprise. At 25, she is only two letters away from EGOT, so I hope this live stage experience will open the doors for her to win a Tony next. Josh Groban performs as expected with his soaring voice, and the supporting cast, specifically Martin Short and Joshua Henry as Gaston, are awesome to watch. Overall, this is a good Christmas-time production, but the progressiveness stops on the surface, as deep down the "Beauty and the Beast" storyline is quite problematic. If you think about it, young girls should really be shielded from the dangerous messages lurking in this horror disguised as a classic Disney fairly tale. It's insidious.

I'm thinking they just tried to do too much here. They tried to combine storyboards, animated version footage and live actors to tell the story again, but it was too much of a mish-mash to make sense. Including the small live audience who applauded at the strangest times. Disappointing too that the couple never danced together nor kissed! Not very romantic. Josh Groban had gushed about the amazing costume/contraption they built for him but it didn't come off well with him peeking out from underneath. And as much as I admire H. E. R.'s talent I thought having her come down the stairs playing her electric guitar was just weird.

I saw the original many years ago but don't remember much about it, so even the animated movie was like seeing this for the first time. I have also seen a version with Robert Carlyle as The Beast aka Rumplestiltskin and Emilie de Ravin as Belle, as one of the stories told in the ABC series "Once Upon a Time". The animated movie, of course, was fantastic. Narrator Rita Moreno, who did a fine job, introduced us to the animator responsible for Belle. He did a wonderful job, as did everyone involved in the excellent animation, and I have to stay the more realistic animation in movies now doesn't quite have that degree of charm. And the acting performances were wonderful. Of course Angela Lansbury's Mrs. Potts was great, and I had forgotten how good Paige O'Hara was.

So we were promised that live action sequences would be musical numbers. That wasn't quite true, as they tried to add some spoken word or dance sequences. We could see the cast walking past a portion of the live audience and that was nice. But after the animated film began, somehow I didn't see the first of the live action sequences as working. I was pleasantly surprised by H. E. R. Most of the time. I don't care for today's music and don't see talent when I see any of today's stars performing what passes for music. But H. E. R. Was fantastic in most of her numbers. Josh Groban was great too, at least as a singer, but his costume looked very strange and I can't imagine something that big being comfortable.

Martin Short was very good, especially on the amazing "Be Our Guest". Still, I couldn't stop comparing him to Jerry Orbach and sometimes felt something was missing. Most of the cast members with spoken lines did a very good job. Joshua Henry had a Shakespearean style that seemed overly pretentious for what is essentially a kids' production, but fine for something more sophisticated.

And I can't say enough about "Be Our Guest". Great singing, dancing, and objects appearing mysteriously from under the table as if by Disney magic.

The conventional dance numbers were great. Not sure how to feel about the wolves or whatever those were. But was the Pilobolus/Esther Williams routine really necessary? It just seemed strange, even if they were quite good.

Great costumes, except for the Beast. In my opinion, Groban should have performed offstage with someone else wearing that hideous thing. I mean hideous in a good way, if we can't see him in it. Great sets, too.

But not all was good. I still saw some of the live action sequences as pointless or not done as well as in the movie. And Shania Twain did not show how talented she really is. I don't know if she didn't have the voice for this sort of production, or whether the problem was her mike. When she sang "Beauty and the Beast", it was better. Not great, but the live audience seemed to like it. As I recall Twain didn't have lines, because of course only Lansbury could really do them right. Maybe Lansbury's vocals would have worked better.

And they couldn't avoid what passes for music in today's world. Actually, music of this type has been around a while, but that doesn't make it good. At one point heavy metal guitar was used, and I didn't care for it. And toward the end, why did H. E. R. Need to pick up a guitar and play that garbage? And some of the music toward the end sounded more like today's music than what was in the movie. Also, H. E. R. Couldn't avoid doing the extra syllables so many stars want to do today.

Mixing the animation and the live action may not have been a bad thing, and some of the live action was certainly good, but in other ways, live action just showed how much better the movie was.

I suppose it was worth seeing.

Can we be done with the vocal fry singing already? H. E. R. was just not right for the role. Or simply can't sing without adding the silly little frills.

Josh Groban and Joshua Henry were the highlights of the show musically. Henry was stellar in the recent Into the Woods production and continues to wow.

However, overall it was a rather disjointed mess. The back and forth between animated and live action was distracting and we didn't get nearly enough of some characters like Martin Short and David Alan Grier.

But the part that made it laugh out loud bad was the guitar solo. Whichever creative head made that decision probably shouldn't be put in charge of anything.