Disney's Beauty & the Beast

SYNOPSIS

*Spoiler alert! Plot and/or ending details follow…

ACT ONE

One cold winter's night, an ugly old woman stumbles up to a prince's castle. She begs the prince for shelter from the cold, though she has only a single rose to give him as payment. Being selfish and heartless, the prince refuses her, simply because she is ugly. The old woman warns him that true beauty is within one's heart, not one's appearance. The prince refuses again and the woman reveals herself to be a powerful enchantress and, as punishment to the cruel and selfish prince, she transforms him into a beast. The servants in the castle are also transformed; they will slowly become tea cups, candles, items of furniture, and other household items. This spell can only be broken if the beast learns to love another and receives her love in return. However, this must happen before the last petal of the enchantress's rose withers and falls, or he will remain a beast forever. His only outlook on the outside world is a magic mirror that shows him anything he wants to see. As the years go by, The Beast falls into a depression, quickly becoming angry, as he wonders who could ever love a hideous monster.

The "beauty" of the title, a girl called Belle, lives with her father Maurice in a small provincial French village. The townspeople note Belle's beauty, but consider her odd because of her passion for books (Belle). Her beauty has attracted the attentions of the owner of the local tavern and hunter, Gaston. He tries to woo her, but Belle considers him 'rude and conceited', and ignores him as her father enters with his latest invention. Gaston sends his sidekick, Lefou, out into the woods to kill a deer for his wedding feast.

Maurice is trying to make his seemingly crazy invention to work, when Belle asks him if he thinks she is odd. He tells her no and they sing of their devotion and love of each other (No Matter What). After getting his invention to work, Maurice leaves to take it to a fair outside the village. Belle gives him a scarf as a parting gift. On the way, he gets lost in the woods. As he is walking through the forest, he gets lost and wolves chase him. Maurice runs blindly through the woods and eventually comes to the Beast's castle. Lumiere, the maître d' who is turning into a candelabra, lets him the castle, to the protestations of Cogsworth, the major domo of the castle who is turning into a clock. The servants of the castle, still in the form of various household objects, look after him. Babette, who is turning into a feather duster, warms him up and Mrs. Potts, a kindly mother turning into a teapot, pours him some tea into her son, Chip, who is turning into a teacup. That is, until the Beast arrives. The beast has Maurice locked up as a prisoner for what he considers as "trespassing".

Back in the village, Gaston gets ready to marry Belle. As she enters, she sees him and tries to run away, but he sees her and launches into his demeaning marriage proposal, (Me). She rejects him, leaving Gaston mystified. Belle re-enters, makes sure that Gaston is gone, then reaffirms her want to travel, and escape "this provincial life." Lefou rushes on, wearing Maurice's scarf. Belle, realizing her father must be in danger, asks Lefou for help, but he refuses so she sets out on her own to find him. She traces her way to the castle, where Cogsworth and Lumiere have been comforting each other. When Belle enters the castle, all the servants see her and recognize their chance for the spell to be broken. Belle finds her father, and when the Beast will not let him go, she offers to take the place of her father as the Beast's prisoner forever; and the Beast agrees and throws Maurice out, denying Belle the chance to say goodbye. Lumiere convinces the Beast to give Belle a nice room to stay. He takes her there and demands that she joins him for dinner. She tries to accept her new situation (Home). Mrs. Potts enters with Chip and tries to cheer Belle up. Belle also discovers, Madam de la Grande Bouche, an opera diva, who is turning into a wardrobe. They try to prepare her for dinner, but she says she is not going.

In the village tavern, Gaston is feeling dejected because Belle turned him down. The townspeople cheer him up (Gaston). Maurice, rushes in and tries to tell people back in the town what has happened to Belle, but the villagers, including Gaston, think him insane and rebuff him, so he decides to set off to get her back on his own. Gaston, gets an idea and whispers it to Lefou.

In the castle, Cogsworth has grown a winding handle, which upsets him very much. The Beast arrives, and demands to know where Belle is. When he discovers that she is not coming, he storms to her room demanding her to come to dinner. She continues to refuse, even after he says please. He becomes extremely angry and decrees that if she does not eat with him, she does not eat at all. The servants their chance at returning to normal diminishing, but refuse to give up. The Beast looks into his mirror in order to see Belle, and he sees her refusing to socialize with him (How Long Must This Go On?).

When Belle gets hungry, she ventures out into the castle, where she encounters the servants. She asks for dinner, and is initially denied by Cogsworth, but the other servants eventually convince him to let her have dinner. During dinner they, and all the other inhabitants of the castle, entertain Belle with an elaborate cabaret show (Be Our Guest).

After dinner, she asks for a tour of the castle, led by Cogsworth. During the tour she slips away into the West Wing, the only part of the castle the Beast said she could not go into. In the West Wing, she sees the enchanted rose, as she moves to touch it, the Beast emerges and yells at her to get out. She tries to leave, but he grabs her. Mortified that he has touched her, she runs out of the castle. The Beast realizing his mistake, tries to apologize, but it is too late (If I Can't Love Her).

ACT TWO

As Belle flees, she comes across wolves in the forest. She is about to be hurt before the Beast arrives and saves her. She has a chance to escape, but she sees the Beast is hurt and takes him back to the castle. There, she nurses him back to health, and he gives her full reign of the castle library. The servants remark about the new found friendship between the Beast and Belle (Something There). As Belle reads Beast a book, she asks for a second chance, if he will have dinner with her. He eagerly agrees. The inhabitants of the castle rejoice about soon turning back to their normal selves (Human Again).

Meanwhile, Gaston and Lefou are meeting with the head of the local insane asylum, Mounsier D'Arque. Gaston asks D'Arque to declare Maurice mad and lock him up, in order to make blackmail Belle into marrying him, (Maison de Lunes).

As the Beast is dressing up for dinner, he admits his fears that Belle may laugh at him when he tells her he loves her, to Lumerie and Cogsworth. They bolster his courage by showing him how well he cleaned up. Belle arrives and they have a lovely dinner, and they dance afterwards (Beauty and the Beast). After dinner, right as the Beast is about to tell Belle he loves her, she asks to see her father. She sees that he is lost in the woods, and the Beast lets her go to find him and gives her the magic mirror. Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts and Lumerie arrive to arrive to congratulate him on a wonderful evening, but are crestfallen when they find that he has let her go. Mrs. Potts remarks that he loves her, but the spell will not be broken until she loves him in return.

As Maurice and Belle arrive back home, Maurice questions Belle on how she escaped from the Beast. She tells him how he let her go, and how her outlook on life has changed (A Change in Me). As she finishes, a mob arrives to take Maurice away. As he is being dragged away, Gaston offers Belle the chance to free her father, if she marries him. She refuses. Belle, eager to prove her father sane, uses the mirror to show the villagers the Beast. This only frightens the villagers. Playing off their fear, Gaston convinces the mob that the Beast is a threat and menace to the community and leads the mob to the castle to pillage it and to kill the Beast (Mob Song).

A battle ensues in which most of the mob is fought and driven off by the enchanted artifacts of the castle, but Gaston reaches the Beast and begins to fight with him, though the Beast, disheartened with a belief that Belle will never come back, doesn't fight back until Belle shows up. However, as the Beast is about to finish off Gaston, he realizes he can no longer find it in himself to kill anyone. As the Beast and Belle are reunited, Gaston stabs the Beast in the back with a dagger, however, Gaston loses his footing on the roof and tumbles to from the castle. After Gaston has fallen, he lays his head on Belle's lap and dies as the last petal of the rose falls. She sobs over his body, and says that she loves him. This breaks the spell and the Beast turns into a handsome prince again. All the servants come rushing on, rejoicing in their humanity. At the end, Belle is reunited with her father and she dances with the Beast as the entire ensemble sings a reprise of Beauty and the Beast.