The national tour of Beauty and the Beast

On the whole, I think it does. It's been sold as a family show, a lavish musical spectacle, and a Disney product. It's all of those things, and especially the latter. Beauty and the Beast is a big, brash, amusement park of a show. It's fast, colorful, loud, opulent, shamelessly sentimental, unapologetically vulgar, technically flawless, and - there's no getting around it - highly entertaining. The well-known story is simple enough to keep the kids' attention, and polished enough to amuse all but the most jaded adults. If this isn't a family show, I don't know what is.

The book, by Linda Woolverton, follows her own original screenplay pretty closely, and Alan Menken composed six additional musical numbers to flesh out a score that, while adequate for a feature-length cartoon, was too skimpy for a two-act musical. The additional material seemed less memorable to me; maybe working with lyricist Tim Rice instead of Menken's long-time collaborator, the late Howard Ashman, didn't produce the same creative sparks. In any case, the new stuff works well enough.

Most of the publicity for Beauty and the Beast , of course, has concentrated on the spectacular sets, costumes, and clever bits of stage magic in the show, probably because these are the easiest things to show on television. They're every bit as impressive as you've heard. Ann Hould-Ward's costumes vividly recreate the human servants transformed into household objects, and her bold, brightly-colored outfits for the protagonists are appropriately cartoonish without being silly. Stan Meyer's sets are elaborate and yet mobile enough to make the many scene changes magically swift, and the illusions of Jim Steinmeyer and John Gaughan are quite convincing, including a very nice levitation effect for the Beast's transformation.

All of this could dwarf the actors, reducing them to the status of the costumed cartoon characters that populate the Disney theme parks. I'm happy to say that it doesn't. Kim Huber is a delightful and expressive Belle with a beautiful, accurate voice, and Fred C. Inkley manages to convey the shifting moods of the Beast's character even through elaborate makeup and prosthetics. Tony Lawson plays the egocentric Gaston broadly and with surprising grace - this guy must have some substantial dance training in his background. This character is a shade too much like L'il Abner to be a convincing villain, although that's mostly the script's fault.

Dan Sklar gives us some impressively athletic physical comedy as Gaston's flunky Lefou and Patrick Page nearly steals the entire show as Lumiere, the human candelabra, with a performance that's an engaging mix of Maurice Chevalier, Liberace, and Elvis Presley. There are also fine performances by Betsy Joslyn as Mrs. Potts, Jeff Brooks as Cogsworth, and Leslie Castay as the flirtatious Babette.

If you're willing to accept Beauty and the Beast on its own terms, I think you'll find it a diverting but not particularly deep evening's entertainment. It's creators have set out to produce a live version of a musical cartoon, and in this they've succeeded admirably. Whether or not this really needed to be done is another question, and one far beyond the scope of this review.

Beauty and the Beast continues at the Fox Theatre through March 10th. Call Metrotix at 314-534-1111 for ticket information.