The show is currently on stage at the Sunderland Empire, with future dates at Birmingham Hippodrome and Manchester Palace Theatre before heading to the Palladium.
Disney’s beloved Olivier Award-winning stage musical Beauty and the Beast – re-imagined and re-designed in a completely new production staged by members of the original award-winning creative team – will come to London in Summer 2022, as part of its latest tour.
Performances will begin at the London Palladium from Friday 24 June 2022, for a strictly limited season until Saturday 17 September. Tickets will go on sale for London at 10 am on Friday 28 January.
The UK tour opened at Bristol Hippodrome on 25 August 2021 and is currently playing at the Sunderland Empire. Spectacular new designs and state-of-the-art technology fuse with the classic story, as the timeless romantic tale is brought to life on stage like never before, with all the charm and elegance audiences expect from Belle and her Beast.
Courtney Stapleton and Shaq Taylor will play the iconic lead roles. Courtney’s credits include Dear Evan Hansen, Six, Les Misérables and Bat Out of Hell, and Shaq is best known for performing in Girl from the North Country, Hadestown and Hex.
Gavin Lee who has stage credits including Mary Poppins, SpongeBob SquarePants, the Broadway Musical and Les Misérables plays Lumiere and Tom Senior who has performed in The Pirates of Penzance and Eugenius! is Gaston. Sam Bailey plays the legendary role of Mrs Potts, with Nigel Richards as Cogsworth.
Martin Ball takes the role of Maurice, Samantha Bingley is Wardrobe, Emma Caffrey is Babette and Louis Stockil plays Le Fou. The full company is completed with Richard Astbury, Sarah Benbelaid, Jake Bishop, Pamela Blair, Liam Buckland, Jasmine Davis, Matthew Dawkins, Autumn Draper, Daisy Edwards, Alyn Hawke, George Hinson, Jennifer Louise Jones, Brontë Lavine, Thomas-Lee Kidd, David McIntosh, Aimee Moore, Sam Murphy, Ashley-Jordon Packer, Emily Squibb, Grace Swaby, India Thornton and Rhys West.
Beauty and the Beast is reimagined in startling new designs which use the latest theatrical innovations. Among the many new features is an exuberant tap dance within the legendary production number Be Our Guest, created expressly for Gavin Lee, recognised as one of the great tappers on either side of the Atlantic.
The structure and tone of the story and score – as conceived for the 1991 film by its executive producer and lyricist Howard Ashman with continued evolution for the Broadway adaptation three years later – made Disney history. Only once before – in Menken and Ashman’s previous film musical The Little Mermaid – had a Disney film been structured like a stage musical where the songs are integral to plot and characterisation rather than only ornamental or digressions. This Menken/Ashman innovation is credited with the 1990’s Disney animation renaissance that went on to create such film classics as Aladdin, The Lion King and Hunchback of Notre Dame and helped re-introduce the book musical form to popular culture.
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 – has new dance arrangements by David Chase, allowing original choreographer Matt West to revisit his work.
Longtime Menken collaborators Michael Kosarin and Danny Troob are the musical supervisors/vocal arrangers and orchestrators, respectively.
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.
Beauty and the Beast – 2022
Now until Saturday 19 February 2022
Sunderland Empire
Box Office: 03330 096 690
www.atgtickets.com/venues/sunderland-empire/
Thursday 3 – Saturday 26 March 2022
Birmingham Hippodrome
Box Office: 0844 338 5000
www.birminghamhippodrome.com
Thursday 31 March – Saturday 4 June 2022
Manchester Palace Theatre
Box Office: 0333 009 6690
www.atgtickets.com/venues/palace-theatre-manchester
Friday 24 June – Saturday 17 September 2022
London Palladium
https://lwtheatres.co.uk/theatres/the-london-palladium/
