HEMET HIGH SCHOOL
FILE PHOTO
Retired Hemet High theater teacher Ron Murray will have a role in “Beauty and the Beast” this week in the theater that bears his name.
Not only will “Beauty and the Beast” be the first musical performed in the school’s new theater when it debuts Thursday, April 18, but the theater’s namesake, longtime theater teacher Ron Murray, will be performing in a Hemet High musical for the first time since his graduation in 1969.
The Disney musical will be presented at 7 p.m. April 18-20.
Admission costs $10 for adults and $7 for Associated Student Body cardholders and children younger than 13.
Tickets are on sale at Hemet High and also and will be available one hour before each performance at the theater box office, 41701 E. Stetson Ave.
Based on a classic French fairy tale, “Beauty and the Beast” tells the story of Belle (played by junior Danielle Rees), an intelligent young woman scorned by her townspeople for being a bookworm who is weary of fighting off the advances of the arrogant Gaston (senior Dominic Geges) and dreaming of escape. When her father (Murray) gets lost in the woods and captured by the forbidding Beast (Rod Flucas), a once-handsome prince turned into a monster by an enchantress, Belle goes off to rescue him.
Taken with her, the Beast agrees to release Belle’s father if she agrees to stay with him forever. Initially repulsed, Belle soon finds much to appreciate in the Beast’s hidden, tender nature. The Beast’s servants — a clock (Christian Giorgianni), a teapot (Maria Perez) and a candlestick (Chris Henley) — see Belle as their salvation: if the Beast and a woman fall in love before the last petal falls from the enchanted rose, he will be free from the curse.
The show is directed by theater teacher Bret Cherland, with musical direction by band director Dan Boulton. Emily West and senior assistant director Baily Johnson provided choreography. Vocal and musical support comes from Bonnie Pumphrey and choir director Michele Risling.