Disney's Beauty and the Beast (Touring)

Houston, 1993

Disney's Beauty and the Beast started as a corporate experiment rather than a theatrical one. The company had an animated hit from 1991 and almost no stage apparatus, so it took the property to the Music Hall in Houston, where previews began on 27 November 1993 and the official run went from 28 November to 26 December that year. Linda Woolverton, who had written the film, adapted her own screenplay into a stage book. Robert Jess Roth directed. Matt West, a dancer by training, choreographed.

Alan Menken's film score came across intact, but a stage evening runs roughly twice the length of an 84-minute cartoon, and the gap had to be filled with music. Menken wrote six new numbers with Tim Rice, who had taken over lyric duties from Howard Ashman — among them 'Home', 'If I Can't Love Her' and 'Human Again', the last of those resurrected from material that had been dropped from the film.

5,461 performances

Previews at the Palace Theatre on Broadway began on 9 March 1994 and the official opening followed on 18 April. Nine Tony nominations produced a single win: Ann Hould-Ward for costume design. The show then settled in for thirteen years, transferring to the Lunt-Fontanne on 16 November 1999 and closing on 29 July 2007 after 5,461 performances — as of December 2025 still the eleventh-longest-running production in Broadway history.

One more interpolation arrived late. 'A Change in Me' was written in 1998 for Toni Braxton when she joined the Broadway company as Belle, and it has stayed in the score ever since. The commercial lesson of those thirteen years — that a film catalogue could be converted into a durable touring asset rather than a one-off event — set the pattern for everything Disney Theatrical did afterwards.

The long gap, and a London rehearsal

A reimagined UK and Ireland tour launched in August 2021 and parked at the London Palladium from 24 June to 17 September 2022. That staging was, in effect, the workshop for what came next. The current North American tour — the first Disney has sent out on the continent in more than 25 years — opened at the Cadillac Palace Theater in Chicago on 9 July 2025 and played there to 2 August.

West returned, promoted to director as well as choreographer, and Woolverton went back into her own book. Reviewers at the Houston stop in January 2026 treated the engagement as a homecoming, since the piece had been assembled in that city thirty-three years earlier. The framing for the relaunch has been the Broadway musical's thirtieth anniversary.

What was cut, and what was rebuilt

The score has been pruned. Four numbers from the 1994 version are gone: 'No Matter What', 'How Long Must This Go On?', 'Maison des Lunes' and 'The Battle'. 'Be Our Guest', 'Gaston', 'Human Again', 'Home' and 'If I Can't Love Her' remain, and other songs have been reordered for a tighter narrative line.

Stanley A. Meyer's sets are deliberately spare for a touring rig and lean on Darrell Maloney's projections to carry the woodland and the castle exteriors; Jim Steinmeyer designed the illusions, including the transformation, and Natasha Katz the lighting. Hould-Ward came back and redesigned her own costumes, giving the Beast a leather coat and Belle a heavily reworked ball gown. David H. Lawrence's hair and make-up read symbolically rather than literally — Cogsworth wears round spectacles that stand in for a clock face rather than a clock casing. Practical effects survive alongside the screens: live flame on Lumière's candlesticks, steam from Mrs Potts' spout. 'Be Our Guest' has been expanded into a full-company tap routine that closes Act One, with Belle herself worked into the number.

A million tickets in fifteen months

The tour marked a year on the road on 10 July 2026 at the Civic Theatre in San Diego, having played 34 cities since the summer of 2025. Christina Rose Hall joined as Mrs Potts and Aaron Kaburick as Maurice around that milestone, replacing Kathy Voytko and Kevin Ligon. On 6 October 2026, during a run at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa that continued to 11 October, the production counted its one millionth guest. Disney Theatrical says box office and attendance records have been set in houses ranging from Madison, Wisconsin to Atlanta, Georgia.

Kyra Belle Johnson and Fergie L. Philippe have held Belle and the Beast since Chicago. Stephen Mark Lukas plays Gaston, Danny Gardner Lumière, Javier Ignacio Cogsworth, Harry Francis LeFou, with Levi Blaise Coleman and Kanoa Edgar alternating as Chip. Philippe, speaking to CBS Colorado on 29 October 2026 from the Denver stop, put the show's hold on audiences down to Disney's knack for stories that do not date, and singled out the Act One look — leather jacket, long matted hair — as the costume he enjoys most. Wardrobe staffer Maya Patrick described houses that mix small children in Belle gowns with adults dressed as Beast or Gaston.

The Denver engagement at the Buell Theatre ran 20 October to 7 November 2026. From there the company crosses into Canada for Calgary (10–15 November), Edmonton (17–22 November) and Vancouver (24–29 November), then Salt Lake City from 8 to 19 December and Seattle over the turn of the year, 22 December to 3 January 2027. The 2026–27 season covers 32 cities, taking in Portland, Omaha, Grand Rapids, a fortnight in Cincinnati from 16 February, Milwaukee, a Florida block through Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa in spring 2027, Fort Worth, Ottawa, and Baltimore from 16 to 20 June 2027.

The critical split

Reviews have divided along a predictable line: the craft is admired, the rethink less so. Rachel Weinberg, covering the Chicago launch for BroadwayWorld in July 2025, found it full of stage effect and the version to see. Houston critics in January 2026 praised Steinmeyer's illusions for making the physical scenery and the projected scenery hard to tell apart, and the Washington notices in March 2026 called Hould-Ward's costumes the strongest element on the stage.

The dissent is specific. Chad Jones, reviewing the San Francisco run at the Orpheum in summer 2026, judged 'Be Our Guest' to have lost its premise — a generic showstopper rather than a number about enchanted household objects — and thought the wolf sequences, built from projections and flashing red eyes, pushed the cast into silent-film overacting. His summary was a production that hits its marks more than it lands emotionally. The BroadwayWorld critic in Washington liked the leads' chemistry but found Philippe's Beast badly underused in Act One and heard the timing in the big numbers slipping under the strain of touring. The recurring practical complaint concerns length: at Houston, an 8pm curtain put audiences out after 10.30pm, and younger children were visibly restless.