JIM HENDRICKS: Keeping the arts in full bloom

I have an admission to make.

Before Cheryl and I went to see “Beauty and the Beast” Saturday at Theatre Albany, I’d never seen a version of the story in any format, except for the first episode of a 1987 TV show with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton, which I vaguely remember not being beastly enough to entice me to watch Episode 2.

I haven’t seen the Disney movies (neither the live version earlier this year nor the animated one from 1991), and I’ve managed to miss any previous film adaptations of the story. I finally read the original story by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve earlier this week, which was, unsurprisingly, quite a bit different from the Disney takes.

The 1740 tale, for instance, had no Gaston, no toady Lafou, and no servants turning into clocks, candelabras, teapots, dishes, cutlery, wardrobes or chipped teacups, though it did include economic distress, wolves, roses and some Cinderellaish siblings who gave Beauty a hard time.

Pretty much my whole exposure to the version of “Beauty and the Beast” that Theatre Albany performed consisted of hearing, from time to time, the songs “Be Our Guest,” “Beauty and the Beast” and only part of the one about the villain Gaston, because, talking about it in the newsroom last week, reporter Terry Lewis mentioned it was the one song he’s heard with the world “expectorating” in it.

“How could you have missed seeing that?” he asked, noting he’d had to sit through it numerous times with his daughter.

“Both my daughters were boys,” I explained.

So, I may have gone into the audience with the fewest preconceived notions of anyone in the theater house.

A theater house that was pretty much packed.

Cheryl and I went to the 2 o’clock matinee Saturday and, while I spotted a few empty seats, there was an impressive crowd, particularly when this is the first Saturday afternoon performance I remember the theater having. The Saturday night audiences — usually the two slowest nights at the box office on a two-weekend run — also were much stronger than usual, Theatre Director Mark Costello told me. There were three sellouts and some pretty-close-to-sellout shows.

Mark figures it was the best-attended opening since the theater’s first Patsy Cline production, which was 15 years ago.

It was gratifying to see the great support this show got and one thing I can say is this — those who attended got to see a great show. I’m sorry I missed Chris Hendley as Gaston. He had to leave the role after the first three performances because he took the stage term “break a leg” too seriously and had to have surgery on an Achilles tendon he tore during a rehearsal before the first show.

I’d seen him run through some of the scenes during a rehearsal, so I knew he was going to own it like he did Gomez Addams in “The Addams Family” last spring, but Andrew Bode, who had been playing the Prince, did an exceptional job in the role, especially when you consider he only had a few days to get ready for it.

Some of my favorites scenes, however, involved Cogsworth the cranky clock (Eddie McCarty) and the impetuous Lumiere (Matt Fenner), who played marvelously off each other.

I also mentioned to Mark that I thought the theater had found something special in Haygan Muse, who played Belle (and Wednesday Addams last spring). As we worked our way down the actors’ line in the Blue Room after the show, the 15-year-old was in high demand from young fans wanting to have their photo taken with her.

“You know,” I told Benjamin Thompson, who played a memorable Beast, as I shook his paw, “I kind of felt bad for you. There you did all the legwork and then the Prince guy (transformed from the beast) gets to swoop in at the end and get the girl.”

“I know,” he said with a shrug, “just the way it goes.”

And it went well, to say the least.

Hopefully, the audiences will come back out for the next production, a Christmas musical in December. Folks complain that there’s nothing to do in Albany, which is sad when you have organizations like Theatre Albany that provide high-quality, live entertainment. Each performance truly is a unique experience that can never be recaptured.

This opening production is encouraging. Without community support, the local arts, like the Beast’s enchanted rose, wither away over time. With strong support like this, they stay in full bloom.

Email Jim Hendricks at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_JHendricks on twitter.