Replete with a cast of and 31 children and nearly 20 adults, Thoroughly Modern Productions’ staging of the Disney musical “Beauty and the Beast” opens tonight at Summit High School in Bend (see “If you go”).

This is no scaled-back junior production of the show, said director David DaCosta, who’s once again teamed with music director Scott Michaelsen and choreographer Dakota Weeda, owner of Terpsichorean Dance Studio, his partners for last summer’s “The Wizard of Oz.”

The children range between ages 8 and 18 and are participating as part of TMP’s intensive performing arts workshop.

“This group of kids, they’ve been phenomenal,” said DaCosta. “It’s a musical, and it’s dance-heavy this time around. The stuff that Dakota has them doing is crazy. In their numbers with the adults and all, some of it’s just so seamless you forget that you’re watching kids and adults.

“And it’s built that way … we don’t try to have, like, this moment or segment where, ‘OK, here come the kids!’ and we parade them out. They’re in everything, all throughout, up and down,” he said.

“Beauty and the Beast” is the fairy tale about a young beauty who falls in love with a beast, who’s really a cursed prince underneath it all. The musical is based on the 1991 film, which itself is based on the classic fairy tale.

The stage musical opened in 1994 and is the ninth-longest running Broadway show, landing between “Mamma Mia!” in eighth and “Wicked” in 10th, according to Playbill.com. Alan Menken wrote the music, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice the lyrics and Linda Woolverton the book.

With TMP’s production, DaCosta has an ace up his sleeve — make that a pair of aces: the musical’s talented leads, Kara Davison as Belle and Daniel Schimmoller as the Beast.

Regarding Schimmoller, the word “bellowing” may have been invented for his booming voice. Add an imposing physicality and you have something along the lines of Schimmoller, so apt for the role of Beast.

“Dan just came out of nowhere,” DaCosta said. “I’d love to say we dug down deep and searched long and far and wide, but, no, he’s a 20-year-old kid, has done not a whole lot of stuff. He just has an innate talent.”

And, DaCosta added, he takes direction well.

DaCosta himself played the role of Beast several years back, and said it’s not an easy role to get right. “It’s one of those roles that I don’t want to say you want to copy what other people are doing, but with every role in this show, there’s a certain level of expectation that the audience (has for) these characters.”

Davison is similar, graced with talent and willing to put in the work, he said.

“You can take Dan’s story and apply it to Kara as well. The girl works her butt off (and is) really a pleasure to work with, one of those people I would go into any show with. This was a dream role for her,” DaCosta said.

In addition to directing, DaCosta designed the castle as four pieces that intentionally come apart.

“The castle starts out all put together, but as the show travels along, we break it apart. We isolate it in certain areas on the stage,” he said. “I’m pretty stoked about it. I had the opportunity to play a part a few years ago, and it’s been cool to be on the full creative side of this in trying to put this playground together to tell this story.”

No castle is complete without gargoyles, and DaCosta has devised a unique way to avoid going dark between scenes, putting the production’s gargoyles to use in set changes.

“Beauty and the Beast” is among his personal favorite musicals, DaCosta said. The story is among his 4-year-old daughter’s favorites, too, he added.

“I’ve told my daughter a truncated version of it every night for the last two years, before we go to bed. Although the funny thing is, when we started doing (the show), she moved on to books before bed … but for the longest time, every night, ‘Tell me about the Beast.’”

— Reporter: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com