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Center Stage
Michael Taubenslag is one smart cookie. When he faces his audience
of toddlers, kindergartners and grade-schoolers, he lets them
know right away that the "Beauty and the Beast" they'll
be seeing differs greatly from the Disney version.
"Now in ours," he says, "her name is Rose, but
in theirs, her name is...?"
"Belle" yell the kids, delighted that their opinion
has been courted. It won't be the only time that Taubenslag coaxes
his audience to participate. Throughout the hour-long show, they'll
be called on to answer a question, or give advice to characters.
After he tells them he'll play Rose's father Bartholomew, he
opens a trunk, and puts on a Native American headdress. "Do
I look like an old man?" he asks. "No" they reproachfully
roar. Then he dons a sombrero. "NO!!" Not until he plasters
a bald skullcap with gray-ringed hair onto his head do they "Yes!"
their approval.
What's impressive is that every time Taubenslag queries them,
he gets an immediate and loud response. In other words, these
kids are paying attention.
They should. Taubenslag is a clown in the great tradition of
Sid Caesar and Jackie Gleason. He allows himself to be pulled
and tugged, and falls off a trunk with a thunk. It's not just
that he throws himself on the floor; he takes to it as If it's
a powerful magnet, and he's a mere shard of metal.
Taubenslag holds stage for a good half-hour before Beauty makes
any significant appearance. Soon you'll be convinced the show
should be called"Beauty's Father and the Beast."
But Taubenslag eventually shares the wealth and the stage with
his wife, Michele Bloom-Taubenslag, as Beauty. She's very good
with the razzmatazz Broadway-styled show tunes that all three
of the Taubenslags wrote with Jeffrey Bressler,
The plot turns on Bartholomew's having to leave home. His daughter
Bratella wants him, to bring home pounds of chocolate and gallons
of Rocky Road Ice cream, but the more winsome Rose merely asks
for a flower. When Bartholomew passes by a castle with pretty
flowers, be picks one for Rose - unaware that the Beast who owns
the garden does not respond kindly to those who tamper with his
property.
As a result, Rose must go live with the Beast in exchange for
her father. That Bartholomew returns home and tells her this -
and lets her go sacrifice her life for his - is one of the less
dramaturgically strong aspects to the script that Taubenslag wrote
with his father, Elliott.
The kids didn't seem to mind. Their fancies were tickled by the
simplest of pleasures, such as Beauty's trying to teach the Beast
to jump rope. How they loved it when she aped his "Awoooo!"
wolf-cry. They accepted the script's overstating the case when
it proclaimed, "They became the best friends in the history
of mankind."
Nevertheless, the charm and strength, of the show is that Taubenslag
makes the kids feel important, as if they play a real part in
the destinies of"Beauty and the Beast' And while tickets
to Disney's show cost $75, six bucks gets you into Taubenslag's,
which will give your child $75 worth of pleasure. If it's his
birthday, they'll make a big deal of him after the show, too.
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