Beauty and the Beast is the perfect Disney production, awash with dreamy set pieces, fabulous frocks and passionate performances. This big-budget show brings the spirit of its 1991 Oscar-winning animation to the Palace theatre stage, with its live incarnation encapsulating the best of what musical theatre has to offer.

From the playwright that brought you Educating Rita, comes a dramady musical that plays with class expectations, friendship and love. Splitting a self-imposed and societal self-fulfilling prophecy, Blood Brothers ends as it begins, opening the show with a dramatic murder.

John Walters 1988 cult classic Hairspray follows the queen-sized Tracy Turnblad and her bubble gum toting bestie as they seek out a spot on the Corny Collins dance show. Merging multiple musical genres and throwing all of the colours on the wall, Paul Kerryson’s charming direction is a slick and glossy showpiece compared to its rougher original.

Heavy-handed cockney accents, underhanded Nazi’s and an animated misanthropic lion are all a part of the undervalued magic surround Bedknobs and Broomsticks. In a musical that blends the practical visual effects of apprentice witch, Eglantine Price against the backdrop of the Battle of Britain, the lite Mary Poppins production is a charmingly British but cheekier adaption of its overshadowing, Oscar-winning older sister.