Disney’s beloved Olivier Award-winning stage musical Beauty and the Beast is to be re-imagined and re-designed in a completely new production staged by the original award-winning creative team, and will open a UK & Ireland Tour in May 2021.
Performances will begin at Curve, Leicester on Tuesday 25 May 2021, with other engagements also announced today in Dublin, Bristol, Liverpool and Edinburgh.
The general on-sale will follow from Thursday 26 November 2020. Customers can sign up to be amongst the first to access tickets and can find all tour dates and information at www.beautyandthebeastmusical.co.uk
Spectacularly reimagined in startling new designs which will use the latest theatrical innovations, this timeless romantic tale will be brought to life on stage like never before, with all the charm and elegance audiences expect from Belle and her Beast.
Rob Roth, a Tony®-nominee for the original production, will again direct, leading a team that includes composer Alan Menken, lyricist Tim Rice, bookwriter Linda Woolverton, choreographer Matt West, scenic designer Stan Meyer, costume designer Ann Hould-Ward and lighting designer Natasha Katz. The team collectively received five Tony® nominations and a win for Hould-Ward’s costume design, when Disney first debuted Beauty and the Beast on Broadway 26 years ago.
Alan Menken said: “Beauty and the Beast is a testament to the genius of my late friend and collaborator Howard Ashman, but the show’s richness comes from the combination of Howard’s style and that of the brilliant Tim Rice, with whom I expanded the score to give voice to the Beast,” said eight-time Oscar winning composer Alan Menken. “It’s clear that audiences the world over want to return to the world of Beauty, which continues to amaze and humble those of us who created it. As the show returns to the UK, I cannot wait to see how Rob Roth and this glorious creative team bring the whole universe of Beauty and the Beast to life once again.”
This new Beauty, while retaining the lush period sound of the Oscar-winning and Tony®-nominated score – which brought classics including Be Our Guest and Beauty and the Beast, as well as Change in Me, added to the musical production in 1998 and retained thereafter – will be heard afresh with new dance arrangements by David Chase, allowing original choreographer Matt West to re-visit his work. Longtime Menken collaborators Michael Kosarin and Danny Troob are musical supervisor/vocal arranger and orchestrator, respectively.
Completing the design team, Tony®-winner John Shivers is sound designer, Darryl Maloney is the video and projections designer, and David H. Lawrence is hair designer. Jim Steinmeyer is the illusions designer, as he was on the original 1994 production.
The original West End production of Beauty and the Beast opened at the Dominion Theatre in April 1997, playing over 1100 performances to more than two million people. It won the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Musical and enjoyed a hugely successful UK & Ireland tour in 2001.
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