Beauty and the Beast

Frank and I went to see Beauty and the Beast at the Capitol Theater last Thursday.
It's our third of the four shows included in our season ticket package.
I love the Capitol Theater, quirks and all. The seats are such that if the person in front of you is over 5"10 or so you might not be able to see. Last night the man in front of Frank chose to lean forward throughout most of the show. That caused a bit of an obstruction but Frank just adjusted to the right and managed. Our seats are in the mid-Mezzanine area. It's been a good location.
The production numbers last night were spectacular. 

Belle was very sweet, not much in the way of "raise the roof" vocals.
The costumes were great, lots of color on the stage.
The set was charming and cleverly designed to move from scene to scene.

Gaston seemed a bit cartoonish. Actually, a lot cartoonish. I thought he was over the top in his “hamming it up”.

LaFou was comparable. Just kind of silly.

We were both surprised that the Beast didn’t have that good of a voice, and I thought his vowels were atrocious. His acting was pretty good. He and Belle played off of each other nicely.

The production numbers were spectacular. They are what saved the show. Be Our Guest, Human Again, Gaston. So well choreographed. The Gaston dance had a great little riff with the pewter mugs. Really clever.

All things considered, this show was fun, and was pretty good. But it truly paled in comparison to the Hale Center Theatre production in West Valley City a few years back. I’ve always known that Hale does very professional work. This just confirmed that fact.

All of the current season ticket holders’ seats had a rose on the seat when we arrived. Of course, there was a fancy dancy flyer attached to it, encouraging us to purchase season tickets for next year. But the rose was a nice touch.

And, of course, I had to have the snow globe as a reminder of a fun evening.