Disney’s beloved Olivier Award-winning stage musical Beauty and the Beast is to be re-imagined and re-designed in a completely new production coming to the Liverpool Empire next year, as part of a UK tour.

The show has been spectacularly revamped in startling new designs. Using the latest theatrical innovations, this timeless romantic tale will be brought to life at The Liverpool Empire from Thursday 23rd September until Saturday 26th October 2021. Bursting with the charm and elegance audiences expect from Belle, the show will also feature the iconic songs, composed by Alan Menken, Be Our Guest and Beauty and the Beast in its soundtrack.

Tickets go on sale to ATG TheatreCard Holders on Friday 20 November with general sale opening on Thursday 26 November.

The original West End production of Beauty and the Beast opened at the Dominion Theatre in April 1997, playing over 1100 performances to more than two million people. It won the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Musical and enjoyed a hugely successful UK & Ireland tour in 2001.

While retaining the lush period sound of the Oscar-winning and Tony®-nominated score, this new production of Beauty and the Beast will be heard afresh with new choreography.

The structure and tone of the story and score – as conceived for the 1991 film by its executive producer and lyricist Howard Ashman with a continued evolution for the Broadway adaptation three years later – made Disney history. Only once before – in Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s previous film musical The Little Mermaid – had a Disney film been structured like a stage musical where the songs are integral to plot and characterisation rather than only ornamental or digressions. This Menken/Ashman innovation is credited with the 1990’s Disney animation renaissance that went on to create such film classics as Aladdin, The Lion King and Hunchback of Notre Dame and helped re-introduce the book musical form to popular culture.

Based on the 1991 film – the first animated feature ever nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture – Beauty and the Beast opened on Broadway in April 1994 and garnered nine Tony nominations and one win. It played for more than 13 years on Broadway, closing in 2007. It remains to this day – 26 years after it opened – among the top 10 longest running shows in Broadway history. The live-action retelling of the animated classic quickly became the highest grossing live action film musical of all time in 2017, a record only beaten by The Lion King live-action release in 2019.

Casting for the production, by Pippa Ailion Casting, is to be announced.

Rob Roth, a Tony®-nominee for the original production will, again, direct creatives Alan Menken (composer), Tim Rice (lyricist), Linda Woolverton (bookwriter), Matt West (choreographer), Stan Meyer (scenic designer), Ann Hould-Ward (costume designer) and lighting designer Natasha Katz.  The team collectively received five Tony® nominations and a win for Hould-Ward’s costume design, when Disney first debuted Beauty and the Beast on Broadway 26 years ago.

Beauty and The Beast is produced by Disney Theatrical Productions, under the supervision of Thomas Schumacher.

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