Beauty and the Beast

It always amazes me that a small city (80,000) like Palmerston North can put on such great musicals. We (Paul, me, Hannah, Lily, Noah and J)went to see Beauty and the Beast yesterday and it was fantastic! The costumes were made by Weta workshops who made the Lord of the Rings films and were beautiful and because Palmy is such a small place we found we knew some people in the production - it was directed by Dean Mckaress who runs the drama/dance groups that Lily and go to, Belle was played by Lily's school drama teacher and one of the girls from church played a spoon in the "Be my guest" song.
It was quite a rush getting there for 4pm, Hannah was working at Max (clothes shop) until 3pm and the rest of us went to a goodbye lunch for some friends from church. Noah was quite hard work there, but it meant I got to look over the whole of the lovely house and get ideas for our new house!
Afterwards while we went to the show, we left Isaac with a family from church who'd offered to look after him - it was the first time he's ever been left with someone from outside our family, but he had a great time being spoiled by their kids.
When we went into the theatre, it was lit like a dark woods and an old storyteller was sitting motionless on the stage. Unfortunately J who was sitting by me decided the storyteller was 'freaky' and thought he was looking straight at her with his eyes turning yellow. I suggested she just close her eyes for a while but she said that wouldn't help as he would still be staring at her. Luckily once the performance started she was fine and quiet.
Noah was not so quiet though and kept asking in a loud voice "Where's the Beast?" then "I don;t like the Beast" then he had to comment each time any scenery was moved. There were two loud bangs and fireworks at the start too when the prince was turned into the Beast, but fortunately we had been warned about these so Noah coped with them fairly well.
It was a long performace and didn't finish till getting on for 7pm so we let the kids eat drive through McDonalds in the car for a treat, then straight to bed when we got home - Noah was still muttering to himself about the beast as he fell asleep!