Disney hasn’t made many better animated films than 1991’s Beauty and the Beast, so adapting it for the stage seemed natural. Alan Menken’s charming music coupled with unforgettable characters, such as the independent-thinking bookworm Belle (who seems “a peculiar girl” to other town folk), the fearsome Beast, and the whole passel of people-turned-objects in the Beast’s castle made the story a sure bet for the stage.

Beauty and the Beast ran for 13 years on Broadway – and now Starlight Theatre presents its delightful version through Sept. 26 at Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park, directed by Brian Wells.

For one of its trickiest stagings, Starlight has turned to ZFX, Inc., which has provided levitating (and flying) people, sets that move and turn every which way, and even giant popping champagne corks – all to tell the story of the girl who falls in love with a hirsute beast who turns out to be a bewitched prince.

Belle (Ashley Anne Zahnlecker) lives in a tiny village with her slightly dotty inventor father Maurice (Jim Chovick). She spends most of her time reading and trying to avoid the attentions of testosterone-soaked Gaston (Randall Dodge, in a hilarious re-creation of his role at Moonlight Stage Productions a few years back). With his slicked-back hair, constant posing and ego as big as all outdoors, he’s mobbed by the other village girls and just can’t fathom Belle’s lack of interest.

One day Maurice gets lost in the woods while on the way to the village fair. When he knocks on the nearest castle door, he winds up in the dungeon of the Beast. When Belle comes looking for him, the Beast (Luke Adams) gives her a choice: he will release Maurice if she agrees to stay with him forever. She agrees, and the stage is set for one of the strangest love stories in musical theater history.

Isolated in his castle for a decade (since his unkind response to a request for shelter resulted in his transformation from handsome prince to hideous beast), the Beast seems to have decided to match disposition and actions with his appearance.

When he finds Belle unreceptive to orders (she refuses a command to have dinner with him), he complains to his servants-turned-objects. Teapot Mrs. Potts (Linda Libby), candlestick Lumiere (Jim Chatham) and clock Cogsworth (Paul James Kruse) advise him that imperiousness seldom works with women and he might try invitation instead.

Beauty and the Beast has everything – engaging characters, a winning script, lovely (and lively) music and a positive message. Starlight has found a terrific cast to pull it off. Zahnlecker, a May MFA graduate in theater performance from SDSU, is a captivating Belle, and Adams is terrific as the Beast. Dodge nearly steals the show as the revolting Gaston, and the other characters shine in their parts as well.

The film is great, the stage show even better.

Starlight Theatre’s Beauty and the Beast plays through September 26, 2007 at Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park. Shows Thursday through Sunday at 8 p.m. For tickets call (619) 544-7827.

Witches come in several temperaments, good, bad and mischievous. In the last category is Gillian Holroyd (Melinda Page Hamilton), lovely but bored, who one day as a lark decides to bewitch the man upstairs... and gets more than she bargained for.

Gillian owns the apartment building in which she, her boisterous warlock brother Nicky (John Lavelle) and their busybody Aunt Queenie (Deborah Taylor) live. While Gillian was out of town, Aunt Queenie nosed around the apartment of upstairs tenant and publisher Shep Henderson (Adrian La Tourelle), and learns he is engaged to Gillian’s old college nemesis.

All the more delicious, thinks Gillian, and the hex is on.

Suddenly Shep appears on her doorstep, and stays, despite saying, “I don’t like anything about you. I feel spellbound.” Wedding plans go by the wayside, he misses too much work … could it be love?

“Do you love me?” he asks.

“I ... like you more than I can say,” Gillian responds cagily, aware that if a witch falls in love, she loses her powers.

Also in the picture is popular author Sidney Redlitch (Gregor Paslawsky), who Shep would like to add to his stable of authors.

Old Globe Shakespeare Festival artistic director Darko Tresnjak tackles romantic comedy for the first time, directing Bell, Book and Candle, which plays through Sept. 9 on the Old Globe Theatre’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage.

English-born American playwright John Van Druten wrote many successful Broadway comedies in the 1930s and ’40s. Bell, Book and Candle, written in 1950, starred Rex Harrison and Lili Palmer on Broadway; the 1958 film featured Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. Bell, Book and Candle was also the precursor of the ’60s TV series “Bewitched.” Van Druten also wrote “I Am a Camera,” which translated to stage and screen as the ever-popular Cabaret.

Though the program doesn’t specify a time period (what’s with that annoying trend, anyway?), Alexander Dodge’s smashing red and black Eero Saarinen-inspired conversation pit of a set, and Gillian’s seamed stockings (not to mention the dress styles and sex-as-subtext dialogue) make it clear that we’re in the ’50s.

Hamilton, the nun who made Gaby’s life miserable for a while on “Desperate Housewives,” is as fine an actress as she is lovely to look at. Shep has no chance, and La Tourelle portrays that beautifully.

Lavelle’s Nicky is properly manic and goofy, Paslawsky fine as the intellectual buffoon Redlitch, and Deborah Taylor nearly steals the show as the dotty, aging Aunt Queenie.

It is true that Bell, Book and Candle is slight and predictable. But it cannot be denied that it is also enormously entertaining.

Bell, Book and Candle plays throu-gh Sept. 9, 2007, at the Old Globe Theatre’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Shows Sunday, Tuesday and Wednes-day at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Satur-day at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets call (619) 23-GLOBE.