As just a little kid, I used to be interested in Disney princesses, being goofy with my children and carrying out on stage. As I’ve received old, I spend a lot more time at the job and grocery shopping and I only talk to my children on the phone about once a week. Lebanon Community Theater’s production of Beauty and the Beast brought me back to my childhood. Entering this show – I’ll be honest – I had not been expecting much.
Beauty and the Beast, with all its glamour and magic, are not typically a good show choice for a grouped community theater with a less-than Broadway budget. Instead what I got was a totally home-grown production that exuded that same passion for theater and let-yourself-go family time. The ensemble is made up of primarily teenagers who managed to get clear that theater is their life. That they had me considering occasions when I’d practice touch-dance routines again and again in my own living room to the point that my mother would ask me for the love of God to stop.
Then I saw adults, who put their grown-up aside for a time and just release and acquired fun. The ensemble members closest to my heart was the Foley family, who all performed in Beauty and the Beast together, despite parents Stacy and Tag having only supported their children behind the moments ever. Although special effects were not top grade, the magic of this production came from the pure …