Beauty & The Beast

Premiering on April 18, 1994, Beauty and the Beast is currently Broadway's sixth-longest running production, devised and produced by Disney Theatrical, a fully owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. more...

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Plot summary

Act One

One cold winter's night, an ugly old woman stumbles up to a prince's castle. She begs the prince for shelter from the cold, though she has only a single rose to give him as payment. Being selfish and heartless, the prince refuses her, simply because she is ugly. The old woman warns him that true beauty is within one's heart, not one's appearance. The prince refuses again and the woman reveals herself to be a powerful enchantress and, as punishment to the cruel and selfish prince, she transforms him into a beast. The servants in the castle are also transformed; they will slowly become tea cups, candles, items of furniture, and other household items. This spell can only be broken if the beast learns to love another and receives her love in return. However, this must happen before the last petal of the enchantress's rose withers and falls, or he will remain a beast forever. His only outlook on the outside world is a magic mirror that shows him anything he wants to see. As the years go by, The Beast falls into a depression, quickly becoming angry, as he wonders who could ever love a hideous monster.

The "beauty" of the title, a girl called Belle, lives with her father Maurice in a small provincial French village. The townspeople note Belle's beauty, but consider her odd because of her passion for books (Belle). Her beauty has attracted the attentions of the owner of the local tavern and hunter, Gaston. He tries to woo her, but Belle considers him 'rude and conceited', and ignores him as her father enters with his latest invention. Gaston sends his sidekick, Lefou, out into the woods to kill a deer for his wedding feast.

Maurice is trying to make his seemingly crazy invention to work, when Belle asks him if he thinks she is odd. He tells her no and they sing of their devotion and love of each other (No Matter What). After getting his invention to work, Maurice leaves and takes it with him to a fair outside the village. Belle gives him a scarf as a parting gift. On the way, he gets lost in the woods. As he is walking through the forest, he gets lost and wolves chase him. Maurice runs blindly through the woods and eventually comes to the Beast's castle. Lumeire, the maître d' who is turning into a candelabra, lets him into the castle, to the protestations of Cogsworth, the major domo of the castle who is turning into a clock. The servants of the castle, still in the form of various household objects, look after him. Babette, who is turning into a featherduster, warms him up and Mrs. Potts, a kindly mother turning into a teapot, pours him some tea into her son, Chip, who is turning into a teacup. That is, until the Beast arrives. The beast has Maurice locked up as a prisoner for what he considers as "trespassing".

Read more at Wikipedia.org