Love notes: the other love story in Beauty and the Beast
It is customary for cast members to give each other little mementos of the show. Joe, for example, gave everyone Sen-Sen for The Music Man, because it's mentioned in the song Trouble, and most people have never seen or tasted it. A common memento is just a hand-written note that tells the person how you've enjoyed working with them.
The Yarbrough girls and a friend or two drew some decorations for our dressing room doors.
Audrey found coloring-book pages of the Beauty and the Beast characters online, and gave us the colored-in pictures. Naturally, Angela and I each received a picture of Lumière and Babette.
At this point, I should mention that, in the show, Lumière and Babette have a scene in
which they accuse each other of using other people to make each other jealous. It goes:
Lum: Babette, you are always trying to make me jealous. Well, it's not going to work this time.
Bab: Me? What about you? With Simone?
Lum: Jacque?
Bab: Michelle?
Lum: Pierre?
Bab: Veronique?
Lum: (lasciviously) Mmm, Veronique!
So about Audrey's pictures: in Angela's, Babette was colored black and white, which was the coloring of Babette's costume in the show. In my picture, she was a fawn color. When Angela noted the color, I said, "Oh, that's Veronique!"
Having thus inflamed the jealousy of her inner Babette, I received this note the next day:
When I saw her, I thanked her for the note, "although," I teased, "it made me sad."
The next day, I was putting together my own cast mementos, and writing notes to at least some of the principals. I thought it would be clever to put two notes on Angela's card: one from me to Angela, and one from Lumière to Babette. Lumière said something like, "How could you be jealous? You must know, when we tango, that there can be no other for me."
About the same time I delivered my note, Angela delivered a followup:
So you see, there was another happily ever after story in this show that wasn't quite as obvious as the main story line. (Ok, even onstage, Lumière and Babette end up together. Don't pick my cute story to death.)