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WPCNR CENTERSTAGE. Theatrical Review by John F. Bailey. May 3, 2008 Updated with Pix: Children of all ages will thrill to Westchester Broadway Theatre production of Beauty and The Beast, which opened this week, bringing the classic Disney movie and Broadway show  to close-up and personal life. All it takes is a liberal sprinkling of Disney Pixie Dust from Tinkerbell  to coax  new pyrotechnics and heights to the dinner theatre that has been giving its own unique stagings of Broadway classics in the round for 34 years.  Thursday evening the Disney magic – if not the  Broadway magic – recreated anew the enchantment of Beauty and The Beast.

A Love for a Once and Future Time: Rena Strober as Belle. Joseph Mahowald as The Beast make everyone’s favorite fairy tale new again at Westchester Broadway Theatre. All Photos, Courtesy, Westchester Broadway Theatre, by John Vecchiolla

Rena Strober is a strong, spunky Belle  who touches your heart, brings on the tears, and uplifts the spirit with her articulated, up-and-down-the-scale mastery of Belle’s reach-inside-and-make-you-feel songs : Home (We Are Where We Shall be Forever) with Maurice (her father), and the splendid song that delivers the essence of falling in love, A Change in Me . `

Joseph Mahowald’s Beast is simpathetic, human, though the book does not give Mr. Mahowald much dialogue to do so, he becomes more human in Act II.  The spunky, spirited heroine who stands on her own,  Belle, first vexes him, then charms him.  His grouchiness and temper come under control. 

Mahowald’s body language as the Beast conveys power and fierceness with a visage that will not terrorize the children – though in fairness to Mahowald he does not have much time in Act One to allow audience to see the good within or feel sympathetic to him.

Mahowald’s rich baritone fills the tiered hall on the Beast’s signature song in Act I – How Long Must This Go On?

Mahowald absolutely delivers  How Long Must This go On? portraying painfully the heartbreak within over his fate (doomed to a Beast’s existence for his treatment of an enchantress in the distant past).

The scene of his transformation opens the show – and electrifies the audience  — not as techno-ed up as Broadway can did  it – but the darkness, the lighting flashes and the explosive pops of flame are loud enough and bright enough to show magic is going on without scaring the young ones. The magic continues!

When Mahowald closes Act I, singing If I Can’t Love Her – you wonder why no one has never made a commercial recording of this song, the regret tears you up.  Mahowald’s vulnerable delivery in that big Riatt-like voice of his brings forth pity for the Beast and makes you root for him. But then, I am a sentimentalist.

Driving the forces of evil in a most devilish and entertaining way is whom I consider to be the ultimate Gaston, Jonathan Burgard – muscled, striding, bigger than life he seems to have stepped out of The Beauty and The Beast movie – into life.  Here he cavorts with admiring ladies, left to right, Jessica Dillan, Floryn Glass, and Katie Sina in the village square singing Gaston, his personal theme song.

A lot of others think so, too. He has played Gaston five times in productions up and down the East Coast. Thursday night he showed why. His preening and superior self-confidence was chuckle-heavy offensive. His comic delivery, clear. Voice deep and macho, and no actor sings about himself better on Gaston’s star-turns in Act One – Me  and Gaston in a marvelous scene. Burgard is aided in his cavorting by Adolpho Blaire as his Lefou whose acrobatics and sychophantic palling around with Gaston is a human recreation of the attitudes of the two  in the movie.`

 

The endearing, comic, daffy Beast Castle Staff — Left to right, Talana Deshaies as Babette, the elegant Lumiere (Rick Hilsabeck), William Hartery as the punctual, proper Cogsworth, Stacia Fernandez as Mrs. Potts and Marguerite Willbanks as Madame de la Grand Bouche — whose tricks with the dresser she is slowly turning into — will delight the children, and of course, Chip, the teacup, Michael Herwitz. 

 Belle’s beginning of captivity in the Beast’s castle is softened by Cogsworth  (solidly characterized by William Hartery as the butler turned into a clock by the enchantress, and Lumiere (played by Rick Hilsabeck with the perfect j’ne sais quoi) the chef, whose hands have become candlesticks which actually light – you have to see this. Hartery and Hilsabeck pick the dark tone of the opening and kick the enchantment up another notch.

The Pixie Dust magic casts its spell capturing you for the rest of the night with the staging of Be Our Guest. 

Be Our Guest, with plates dancing, the set expanding, opening up  to multi-levels before your eyes will make your jaw drop as the small stage gains depth and turns into a magnificent dining hall with the ensemble delivering a spectacularly choreographed number combining costumes and steps and pacing that is beyond Vegas. It is easily the best full-cast dance spectacular WBT has ever staged in the eight years this reporter has been reviewing their productions. Kudus to Director and Choreographer Richard Stafford on this number alone.

However Belle fleas the Beast’s lair when she invades the forbidden West Wing of the Castle. As The Beast dispairs, singing If I Can’t Love Her to end the hour and 20 minute first act – with the haunting lines “So little is left of me… “ and “Long ago I should have seen all the things I could have been…” The way Mr. Mahowald delivers this song will break your heart. He makes his hurt inside, hurt inside you.

The Second Act builds on the first, heightening dramatic intensity – but is so well acted – you even though you know the story – you are worried about the Beast and Belle.

Of course, when Belle flees the castle, wolves (a frightening bunch) attack her and The Beast viewing the action in a magic mirror, comes to her rescue. Romance then blossoms. A touching scene of her aiding his wounds, is followed by his gift of his library.

Two numbers by the terrific entourage of actors and actresses move the romance along in believable fashion, singing “Something There,” and Mrs. Potts (Stacia Fernandez) delivering the title song Beauty and The Beast – that tells you what is happening between the odd couple who dote more and more on each other.  Again the WBT set opens up to the stars magically, creating a grand romantic vista.

At this juncture Belle delivers her knockout love song – A Change in Me. Ms.Strober does not sing this, she  shimmers it exquisitely  endowing it with a grace that renders in melody blossoming love in bloom. It is exactly how a person in love feels.  Strober handles the Belle songs superbly and is every bit the Belle of the movie, wholesome, spirited, plucky.

Of particular note is Strober’s duet with David Titus, playing her father, Maurice. Their duet No Matter What” when his invention of an automated log splitter (hilarious at best) is a marvelous statement of how fathers and daughters feel about each other.  Titus gets the most out of his lines, too. His Rodney Dangerfield eyes bring instant merriment.

 Belle comes to aid her father, about to be asylumed due to a dastardly blackmail plot by Gaston.  The Beast is put in danger as Gaston leads a mob to the castle to kill him.

In the denouement, a duel between Gaston and the Beast, on a castle tower that rises up out of the stage, you almost think it is not going to end happily – preserving suspense to the end.

 

The famous final scene produces a magic happy moment producing bravos for Lumiere, Cogsworth, Gaston, Beauty and Beast, good triumphing!

The larger than normal live orchestra does not deliver the Big Broadway sound – however it stays under the singers so all words are not drowned out.

The sets are detailed and employ ingenious creative use of the WBT’s mechanical abilities. Rising turrets out of nowhere. Lurking wolves. Magnificent costumes create the Disney enchantment WBT style. The set design, through the magic of rotating arches turns the little stage into the illusion of a vast brooding castle.

Give me some of that pixie dust!

The Disney dream never fails.

Beauty and The Beast runs 2 hours and 20 minutes. It began at 8:20 and ended at 10:45 with a thirty minute intermission.

It runs through August 9. For information, contact www.broadwaytheatre.com.

 

 

WPCNR’S THE REAL DEAL By The Wedding Jeannie, Jeannie Uyanik of C&G Weddings, WPCNR Columnista May 3, 2008: Destination events used to conjure up images of having to take a plane all the way out east – from Pennsylvania.  Its quite common now a days to have the majority of guests at an event flying in from all over the world, traveling for 16 hours one way just to join a couple for their big day.  It’s for this reason precisely, that rehearsal dinner rules and etiquette have changed so drastically (next weeks topic in depth); they don’t require the old yard stick of inviting anyone coming in from out of town as that would generally precipitate having two weddings.

 

Jeannie Uyanik, Planner to the World

The Wedding Jeannie

 

So for the purpose of this column’s discussion, a Destination Wedding is not one where most of the guests have to travel to attend your wedding, which is being hosted either in the couples’ home town, or the home town of one of the immediate families.  It is one where all the guests, including the bride and groom will have to travel to get to it; this does not mean that it has to be out of the country, a certain size or a certain distance away.  It simply means that neither you nor anyone attending the wedding actually lives where it’s taking place.  And then the fun begins.

 

 

Clearly, there are a few good reasons to do destination weddings, and as couples embark on a discussion of if they should or should not, consider the following:

 

1)      Is your aim to limit the budget or the guest list?

 

We find that most couples who begin to plan destination weddings do so because they are either trying to save money and figure that a far away wedding, will not only limit the budget, but also inevitably the guest list.  Neither is necessarily true.  Many of our clients are shocked when they realize how much more a destination wedding can cost.  And since most would have in theory preferred a big city locale, they are often pleasantly surprised to find that their dollars will go a lot farther at home.  Why?  Simply because there are so many additional costs that you have to cover when getting married farther away. 

 

i)                    You will usually have to foot the bill for at LEAST one trip to the destination of choice before the wedding.  Our experience shows that it will probably be two or three to make sure that everything is in place and in order.  This will require hotels, flights, transportation and food.  This adds up pretty quickly, particularly if you have chosen a destination that is also popular for the rest of the world.

 

ii)                   Hotel accommodations for guests when you are planning a destination wedding become a lot more important for the bride and groom to arrange for obvious reasons.  Many couples will choose to subsidize the room rate for the hotels, or they will feel obligated to if they have chosen a destination and time of year that is particularly costly.  This is something that many couples struggle with, but we find that since the hotel rates are usually the biggest reason that guests are not able to come, the majority of couples tend to subsidize rates. 

 

iii)                 Events as a whole for the time that guests are with you for your wedding become more important.  If you are doing a wedding in a city with which everyone is fairly familiar or lives, its less important to ensure that a) all guests are invited to the rehearsal dinner, or that there is a farewell brunch b) all guests feel that they are able to see the location, or be given a tour of some sort to get to know it and c) feel that they are participating in more of a “wedding weekend” rather than a 1 day event – especially if costly or lengthy travel is involved.

 

iv)                 Welcome baskets are a must.  When you invite every single guest to travel for your wedding, the least that you can do is give them a small token of your appreciation upon arrival – clearly, this is a lovely gesture for any wedding, but it’s an absolute necessity for a destination wedding.  Not doing so would be an egregious breach of etiquette and not spending the time or even money to make it something special or meaningful would be even worse!

 

v)                  Don’t ever expect that your guest attendance list will be lighter just because the wedding is farther.  The attrition rates for destination weddings tends to be in line with those close to home mainly because travel for weddings is so common place now a days and also because people use destination weddings as an excuse to get away or go see a location to which they have not been before.  The higher than expected rate of return always shocks destination wedding couples; both emotion and purse alike.  Many expect that the decrease in guest count will reduce the costs, but when the guests send the excited responses, the dollars go up!

 

2)      Do you have a specific location in mind, or are you willing to get married anywhere?

 

Many couples (given the above) will simply pick a destination randomly.  This is tough because it’s hard to fall in love with a place on demand and through intensive research on-line.  We always recommend that if a destination wedding is a must, choose a location that is genuinely meaningful to you and your fiance.  This will have a great impact on how guests feel about traveling there, about how you feel going there to prepare in advance of the wedding and of course, how the entire event takes shape.  It’s important to pick a destination wisely though especially since many couples assume that island weddings or international weddings will definitely be cheaper. 

 

That is certainly not the case.  With a currently weak dollar, the hope to stretch the budget is often just that. Often, even when services and goods are cheaper, so many things are more nebulous than when dealing in your own home town; in turn you have to take more expensive routes to ensure that details are being executed flawlessly. 

 

For instance, while you might not get married at the Four Seasons in New York City, given that it’s cheaper on a small island, you would and should consider a 5-star resort facility in order to guarantee quality.  What that translates to is that you will not necessarily have paid 5-star prices in the destination location, but it does not mean that you have saved money relative to doing it at home.   Often couples will pick a destination because of a specific resort or hotel (i.e. the Four Seasons in Costa Rica or the Ritz Carlton in Cancun).  Having your wedding or event at a hotel when doing destination planning is useful for everyone.  It removes the need and cost for transportation and eliminates an extra layer of complications. 

 

3)      Does the time of year that you would love to have your nuptials match that of the destination locations’ best or worst weather?

 

Many locations for destination weddings are of course warmer weather islands that couples flock to in the winter.  Of course, this can be a travel nightmare for guests, given that if you want to be in warm weather, the likelihood is high that everyone else does too.  What we see in response to that, is couples’ trying to go at off season times; in theory great, but off season is named that for a reason. 

 

Often this can be hard because hotels and restaurants shut down in the off months, either to refurbish or because traffic is low and hurricanes and or bad weather are typical during the off-seasons which would be risky for an event where airplane travel plays such a huge role.   High season is not only busy, but also expensive, so when determining location think about weather, and the likelihood that you might be competing with other guests not coming to celebrate your wedding. 

 

4)      Are you upsetting more people than you really want to by wanting to fly away?

 

Destination weddings can be contentious issues at family dinners when the families are not clear on why the couple is planning to “run away” to get married.  It’s important to explain to families the rationale behind the decision and to really attempt to include them as much as possible.  We have found that many families are only upset because they feel that they won’t be able to contribute as much, or that they will not have the same roles as they would if the couple were getting married closer to home (theirs or yours).  Preempting a lot of the concerns, responding PRO-actively rather than reactively to questions about details, hotels, flights, and dates will help pave the way for stress free planning that also gets everyone excited rather than anxious.

 

Destination weddings are a wonderful way to create an intimate wedding reception, provide a unique adventure for you and your guests and ensure that your wedding stands out from all the others.  We are huge fans of destination events, but it’s important to really understand all the issues with them before pulling the proverbial trigger.