Disney's Beauty and the Beast

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A whole generation learned what a musical could be from a dancing teapot and a candelabra, and most of them never fully recovered. Put it on a real stage with a full orchestra swelling underneath Be Our Guest, and watch those same people — grown now, frequently with kids of their own — turn into puddles in the dark.

This is grand, gold-drenched, family-first Broadway with no apology for any of it: the ballroom, the enchanted castle, the yellow gown lit so it reads from the back row of the hall. The touring production has the scale to actually deliver that ballroom, which is the moment everything hinges on and the one cheap productions always get wrong.

Segerstrom in Costa Mesa is an easy stop off the freeway near the mall.

Make it a first big theater night for a small person, or go entirely for yourself. Some stories really are worth telling as a tale as old as time.