The touring productions brought in by a partnership of CAPA and Broadway Across America to our beautiful Ohio Theatre can always be counted on for terrific singing and extraordinary spectacle. It’s a shame to report that the new production of Disney’s stage adaptation of The Little Mermaid, created by The 5th Avenue Theatre and directed by Glenn Casale, which opened on Tuesday, doesn’t have anything else to recommend it.
Disney’s loose adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale following is rightly seen as the beginning of their animated film renaissance to a great part due to the glittering, catchy, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman score. The stage adaptation hits all the beats of the original plot. We follow Ariel’s (Diana Huey) first steps toward independence from her loving but overprotective father King Triton (Steve Blanchard) as she chases true love with Prince Eric (Matthew Kacergis). In the process, she exasperates her caretaker, the crab Sebastian (Melvin Abston), and makes an ill-considered bargain with her aunt Ursula (Jennifer Allen).
Part of the fault lies in the original adaptation of the material for the stage, starting with the decision to water down the songs people know and love with mostly longer, duller songs Menken wrote with lyricist Glenn Slater. These new songs swamp the originals almost two to one and seem to serve no greater purpose than to make The Little Mermaid long enough to have an intermission. The pacing – from the new book by Doug Wright – also reduces dramatic plot points to tossed-off one-liners while making time for extended, repetitive slapstick.
Adding to the fatigue and the sense of padding is the tendency for flashes of beautiful, fluid dancing to all end stopped dead in the middle of the stage. For a musical set two-thirds under water, there’s a distressing lack of fluidity and lightness. The exception to that comes with the wirework – Casale’s direction and Paul Rubin’s flying choreography brilliantly evoke the three-dimensional almost-weightlessness I missed the rest of the show, and Huey, Blanchard, and Jamie Torcellini’s Scuttle make flying on wires seem natural as breathing. Amy Clark and Mark Ross’ costumes are also stunning and very evocative with the exception of Ursula whose tentacles get manually manipulated by her henchmen in a way that awkwardly recalls Ed Wood movies.
Good points mainly come with the acting. In a few scenes, Blanchard’s Triton sells his skill as a father and a ruler and even implies some real, deep heartbreak in his too-brief scenes with Ursula. Allen’s voice rips into “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” one of the highlights of the show and her dynamic with Huey and Blanchard convinces you of her righteous rage and her charisma: when she’s done you believe you’d sell your soul to her too. Huey’s effervescence is charming, and she makes the most out of her material, and Kacergis brings a sense of self-aware humor and canny understanding of the world to a Prince who could have been a cardboard cut-out.
The Little Mermaid feels as though it’s strictly for fans of the movie desperate for a little more of those characters. It’s very long (two and a half hours with intermission) and slow for small children and too shallow and leaden for adult audiences not already in.
The Little Mermaid runs through Sunday, February 5, with performances at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8:00 p.m. Friday, 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Saturday, and 1:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more info, visit http://columbus.broadway.com/shows/little-mermaid-baa/