From: olivia@leland.Stanford.EDU (Olivia Williamson)
Subject: RAD/LIVE! Wednesday Dec 16-At The Studio
Reply-To: rad_live@gsb.stanford.edu
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 18:45:15 GMT




Welcome to the third installment of of Rec.Arts.Disney/LIVE!
reporting from the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

We spent the day at the Studio.  As with the Magic Kingdom, Hollywood 
Boulevard is decked out for Christmas.  The StudioChristmas tree is 
another 50-foot green spire of perfection, circled by the 'Hollywood 
Special' toy train.  The trainwinds its way through famous, miniature 
scenes from SouthernCalifornia, including the Hollywood hills and the 
famous  H O L L Y W O O D  sign.

We saw selected attractions throughout the day, with no perceivable 
waits for anything.  Note that this will definitely not be the case 
later in the week.

The most popular attraction these days, and the only attraction with any 
kind of crowd, was the "Beauty and theBeast--Live on Stage" show in the 
Theatre of the Stars.For most shows, you should be there about a half 
hour before showtime.

B&B-Live is a Broadway-style musical revue featuring the characters from 
last year's record-breaking animated feature.The revue includes the best 
numbers from the movie: "Be our Guest", 'That Belle!', "Something 
There", "The Mob Song" (Kill the Beast), and the movie's signature theme, 
"Beauty and the Beast" sung by Angela Landsbury.

To save money, in this sort of show substitutes are sometimes used in
place of the star vocal talent for the roles of animated characters.  
I've found out that the vocal talent used to produce this show is 
indeed the vocal cast of the movie, including Robby Benson (Beast), 
Angela Landsbury (Mrs. Potts), Jerry Orbach (Lumiere), David Ogden 
Stiers (Cogsworth), and Bradley Pierce (Chip).  

Belle and Gaston are live actresses and actors who actually sing the 
songs and speak the lines in the show.  Both of these parts are
played really well (remember that this is a theme park song-and-
dance!)

The opening number, "Be our Guest!", is a BIG choral production number, 
with dancing plates, bottles, spoons, chefs, and more.  There's a 
neat "parfait" that comes out, and transforms into a dancer in a beautiful 
showgirl costume reminiscent of costumes from the famous 
San Francisco show "Beach Blanket Babylon".

Beast is mortally wounded by the jealous Gaston in a climactic battle.  
But only Belle can save him, proclaiming her love, and magically 
transforming the Beast into her Prince with a shower of sparkles and fog.  
Equally magically, Belle reappears in her signature gold ballgown, 
and Belle andthe Prince recreate their dance together.  The closing 
number is really, really beautiful, with the inclusion of six pairs
of dancers that join the couple in a fast-moving waltz scene amid 
fireworks and doves.

This show includes some of the best work I've ever seen.  Belle's dress 
is INCREDIBLE. It actually looks better than the movie--a draped skirt 
of tiered gold lame' and rhinestones.  Also watch the costumes of the 
waltz-pairs in the finale dance--men's costumes authentic with Beast's 
famous look from the movie, and women's rose-colored ball gowns 
layered, to resemble roses, a significant theme of the movie.

As I mentioned earlier, this show is extremely popular.  
I saw the show once last year (yes, it has been running this long!) 
just after it opened; since that time the theatre has been significantly
modified to seat over 1000...and still it's not enough.
A Cast Member tolld me that all 5 of the day's shows were SRO 
(Standing Room Only).  During the holiday period they will probably 
push to 6 or even 7 shows (like Disneyland did, and they can seat 
2500!) but plan to arrive a little early.

Gauging from the popularity of this show and the Beast show (I call 
them Beast/East and Beast/West) that recently went on hiatus at 
Disneyland, many Cast Members are optimistic that the show will 
find a permanent home on one or both coasts.  The popularity of 
The Little Mermaid, and Guest Comments requesting a TLM attraction 
yielded "Voyages of The Little Mermaid", so if you like B&B, say 
something!

We rode "Voyages of the Little Mermaid" for the very first 
time, and we'll cover this in our next segment.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: rec.arts.disney