Beauty and the Beast

Don’t go into Adelaide Festival’s Beauty and the Beast expecting saccharine Disney songs and family-friendly entertainment.

This is an adults-only romp, albeit one that is straight from the heart. Created by the husband and wife team of Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser (who recently starred in the recent season of American Horror Story), the couple intertwines their own love story into the much-loved tale.

Beauty and the Beast is one of those rare productions that doesn’t sicken you, as you watch a show essentially about the performers’ story of how they fell in love. Full of goofy humour (and sex), Beauty and the Beast excels because it is honest, heartfelt and bloody hilarious. Muz (a burlesque dancer) and Fraser (a famed freakshow performer who has short, seal-like arms and no thumbs – he was a Thalidomide baby) basically tell the audience to have a childlike sense of wonder (I’m paraphrasing here) when they introduce the show.

Directed by UK theatre director Phelim McDermott, Beauty and the Beast is a chance for the couple, who performed at the Fringe with The Freak and the Showgirl a few years ago, to head into the theatre with an impressive production to show a sexual awakening version of the classic fairy tale.

With the help of two puppeteers/actors (Jonny Dixon and Jess Mabel Jones – both brilliant), Fraser and Muz tell the tale with a humorous edge with the help of impressive shadow puppet action by Dixon and Jones at the beginning.

The main performers switch from actors (Muz – Beauty and Fraser – Beast) to narrators, and they break character to tell stories about their childhood, their first meeting and falling in love. The first half is more PG than X-rated, but, don’t worry, it finishes in X-rated glory.

The clever production uses Dixon and Jones in a variety of roles (including arms for Fraser’s Beast), secondary characters, as well as creating sweet yet hilariously naughty puppets on stage.

Muz and Fraser’s Beauty and the Beast is a superb twist on the classic tale (including a much-needed flip of the ending). In their hands it is a love story that charms, shocks and breaks down barriers while keeping the audience ridiculously entertained.

4.5/5

Beauty and the Beast continues at Dunstan Playhouse until Sunday, March 15  Photo: Sheila Burnett