BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Birmingham Royal Ballet; photo: Bill Cooper

MUSIC GLENN BUHR
DESIGNS PHILIP PROWSE
LIGHTING MARK JONATHAN

In my youth I saw Ken Russell’s film Mahler and was instantly converted. Mahler’s first symphony has a slow funeral march (which sounds for all the world like Frère Jacques!) which was inspired by a woodcut entitled ‘How the animals buried the hunter’. This woodcut also became the inspiration for Beauty and the Beast.

For years I had contemplated this famous fairy tale but found it incomplete in its moral resolution and limited in its ‘population’. ‘How the animals buried the hunter’ gave me the idea of a bloodthirsty hunting prince whose entire court is transformed into animals as retribution for his wickedness.

As in the woodcut, when the Beast lies at death’s door the animals carry him on a bier to his final resting place. At its heart the ballet is a meditation on the nature of ‘sin’ and redemption. Darkly comical and mysterious, Beast is a real fairy story which has gone on to become a BRB audience favourite.