Live Performance Review: La Belle et la Bete with live accompanyment from the Philip Glass Ensemble (Edinburgh International Festival (E.I.F.) 2013), Sunday 11.08.2012 20:00 The Edinburgh Playhouse, Edinburgh 

This performance uses the 1946 film by Jean Cocteau of 'La Belle et la Bette', removes the original soundtrack and adds in new music and words sung by four vocalists (2 male & 2 female).

The music, as with a lot of Glass's work, had both monotonous and hypnotic qualities. The music veered from sounding quite beautiful to absurd and irritating. Thankfully the irritating periods did not last long. The work itself did occasionally feel as though it was dragging, which I put down to both the edit of the film combined with passages of sound that sounded intermittently stuck.

On the whole I found the performance enjoyable.

Rating: 08/10.