"Beauty and the Beast' performed by CHS Choral Department

The castle staff, enchanted as household items, greet Belle, the peasant girl, and welcome her to the castle.
The castle staff, enchanted as household items, greet Belle, the peasant girl, and welcome her to the castle.

The California High School Choral Department performed Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" this past weekend to a packed auditorium. Performances were held at 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

The story, told in two acts with a total of 13 scenes, is about an enchantment put on a prince, his servants, castle and the surrounding lands. The curse results in the prince becoming a beast (both played by Mason Albertson), his servants gradually becoming mobile, thinking, speaking household items and the castle and lands turning into forbidding, dangerous places. The curse can only be broken by someone returning the love of the beast before a rose left by the woman (Katie Imhoff) who set the curse loses its last petal. Otherwise, he will remain a beast forever.

It is years later that a young peasant woman, Belle (Abbie Bilyeu), comes on the scene. She and her father, Maurice (Taylor Jones), live nearby in a village. Her father, an inventor, and Belle, who reads a lot, are considered weird by the other townspeople. She is being pursued by the village hunter, Gaston (Dylan Silvey). She does not welcome his advances, and he does not improve his case by making fun of her fathers inventions and her bookishness.

Belle lets her father know how lonely she is and how others consider them strange. He thinks his new invention of a machine will bring them good fortune.

Mounting his machine on a three-wheel bicycle, Maurice rides off to show the invention at a fair. He gets lost, gets away from a pack of wolves, finds a strange castle and goes in to get away from a storm. He is welcomed by the household items, which are enchanted. They are Lumière the candelabra (Jack Johnston), Mrs. Potts the teapot (Halle Oliver) and her son Chip the tea cup (Jackson Barnard) and Cogsworth the clock and head of the household (Caleb Stahl). When the Beast finds Maurice, who says he needs a place to stay, he is going to throw him out, even if the wolves would eat him. Instead, he is locked in a dungeon in the castle.

Back in the village, Gaston proposes to Belle, telling her of the life he envisions. She turns him down, bruising his ego. When a villager shows up with her father's scarf which he found in the forest, she searches for him, ending up at the castle.

It's a Disney fairy tale, so it turns out well in the end, even though there are many ups and downs and furious fighting between Gaston and the Beast. The spell is broken just as the last petal falls. The beast is now the prince. The enchanted household items return to their original human form in the beautiful castle.

Directed by Michele Bilyeu, the musical stage production and its preparation took the talents of a great many students, teachers, parents and volunteers.