Beauty and the Beast Birmingham Hippodrome CLEMENT CRISP
By Clement Crisp for The Financial Times
It is not easy to know what to make of David Bintley's new two-act, six-scene Beauty and the Beast, staged for his Birmingham Royal Ballet, and having its first performance on Monday. It is, of course, an entry in the must-see-for-Christmas stakes, a rival to dear Nutcrackeras a box-office darling. It boasts, and will do well to boast, superb design by Philip Prowse, which excites the imagination, delights the eye, performs prodigies of dramatic stimulation (which, alas, the other elements fail to do.) The Beast's domain is ripest Louis XIV, the Beauty's Charles X. Costuming is brilliant. It is well lit by Mark Jonathan.
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