ALBUM REVIEW : A Glorious Disney Soundtrack

By going to work for Disney, songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken traded in their former musical “subversiveness” for something more significant: nothing less than reintroducing a full breadth of wit and intelligence to--and, in effect, reviving--the family musical. And with their “Beauty and the Beast” song score, much more so even than their earlier “Little Mermaid,” they nailed it.

The “Beauty” soundtrack (on Disney Records) captures what may have been their most difficult achievement, taking fantasy source material usually thought of in terms of haunting luminescence and turning it into contradictorily big, robust, American musical-comedy. Miraculously, the dynamic duo managed to pen outrightly satirical or sentimental Broadway-sized production numbers without turning this beauty of a tale into an unwieldy behemoth.

What fans of the movie may notice only in listening to the album is a presence almost entirely missing in the six songs--that of Beast. Wisely, his essential mystique was retained by not turning him into a song-’n’-dance man(thing) like the other characters. The one time Beast is allowed to briefly burst into song is his partial duet on the blooming-love ballad “Something There.” (In that number, grown-ups, at least, may get a chuckle out of the way Paige O’Hara as Belle intones the line “New--and a bit alarming ,” as if to cue that, yes, even in fantasy, there is something a bit odd about having a crush on a hairy animal.)

That and the other vocal numbers are collected on Side 1, a 25-minute cornucopia of staples of the theater. The opening “Belle” is a sprawling set piece establishing the heroine and her town. The similarly outsized “Be Our Guest,” with its singing silverware, is obviously intended as the “Under the Sea”-style show-stopper. The true highlight, though, is “Gaston,” Richard White’s riotous impersonation of Robert Goulet’s booming vocal style celebrating the hunky villain’s cleft chin and ego. The romantic title theme (sung by teapot Angela Lansbury) closes the side, and is reprised on Side 2 in an OK modern R&B; rendition following Menken’s instrumental score.

One small complaint might be the lack of a lyric sheet, because even upon careful listening, a few of the lines sung by a comic chorus in “Gaston” and “The Mob Song” are hard to make out. And with the late Ashman at the lyrical helm, no one wants to miss a potential laugh: Rarely in recent years had a lyricist such a knack for writing to all ages at once--and never down to Disney’s younger demographic. For him, this is a beaut of a career-capper.