REVIEW: Disney's The Little Mermaid - PhenoMNal twin cities

After struggling to find the words to describe Disney’s adaptation of The Little Mermaid into a musical, I’ll just come out and say it: I didn’t like it. The Little Mermaid: The Musical was a relative failure on Broadway but, instead of allowing the ill-conceived conversion to slip quietly beneath the waves, Disney re-worked it and floated it out on tour where it has been luring unwary audiences in like a Siren. If these over-wrought nautical metaphors left you enchanted (and not moaning like a wave on a rocky shore), you can ignore the rest of this review and purchase your tickets for the show.

While I never expected The Little Mermaid to deliver quite the same magic as Disney’s adaptation of The Lion King, I went into this show thinking that it would be a nice, nostalgic return to a musical I enjoyed watching when I was young. The film marked the rebirth of Disney’s animated features after decades of flops, capturing audiences with its focus on music, particularly in the form or Ariel’s radiant voice. The theatrical version, rather than being a celebration of vocal talent and beautiful music, is an obvious cash-grab.

You’d think with such excellent source material like “Part of Your World”, “Under the Sea”, and “Kiss the Girl” to work with, a stage adaptation would be like shooting fish in a barrel (that’s the last ocean pun, I promise), but instead it felt as if each of the original numbers were just boxes it needed to check off as it plodded along. Whereas the original film was a fleeting 83 minutes long, the theatrical version adds nearly an extra hour of material so that it can justify a money-making intermission. Clocking in at an interminable two hours and twenty minutes, The Little Mermaid is crammed full of filler and unnecessary plot complications involving, among other things: Ariel’s jealous “mersisters,” a confusingly post-pubescent Flounder’s unrequited romantic feelings for Ariel, and a Machiavellian scheme through which Ursula seeks to wrest control of the ocean from King Triton (Ariel’s aggrieved father and, it turns out, Ursula’s brother) by luring Ariel into an unconscionable contract as a trap that will compel Triton to come to her rescue and… are you bored yet? Disney should have left the political machinations to Frank Underwood and stuck to what it does best, entertaining families with catchy tunes, elaborate scenery and colorful costumes.

I could forgive the financial necessity of a longer show if the new songs were anything other than terrible. Although original songwriter, Alan Menkin, returned to write the new material, it’s clear that he had run out of creative ideas years ago–his last credits with Disney before this being the dreadful Hunchback of Notre Dame and the forgettable Hercules. Having devoted much of the first act to the third-rate songs and lengthy, expository dialogue, there was actually little time left for the songs people paid to see. Not only did the performance of “Under the Sea,” for example, feel rushed, several microphone and costume glitches (such as a jellyfish turning inside out and the feathers of some dancing sea ferns’ costumes coming loose) broke any remaining illusions.

Speaking of the production itself, the use of scrims and actors flying on wire harnesses to make the underwater scenes appear submerged was confusingly inconsistent–in some scenes the actors stood on the stage and delivered their lines, while in others, they flew/swam all over the place. This was only slightly less distracting than the stage directions that compelled the merfolk performers to constantly undulate their bodies to make it look like they were swimming rather than standing on a stage.

Most of the performers were very talented, including the actors who played Prince Eric (Eric Kunze) and King Triton (Fred Inkley). Kunze played Chris in Miss Saigon on Broadway and Inkley played Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, also on Broadway, and it would be a treat to hear either of them sing names from the phone book, so they took the edge off the numbers they were in. The casting for Ursula, however, was off in my opinion. The performer did the best she could, but she’s clearly a mezzo-soprano, when the roll demands someone with the gravitas of a contralto. Her songs ends up being screechy and grating, when they should be deep and menacing.

If you do end up going, you’ll be rewarded for coming back from intermission with a solid mix of good songs and minimal filler. That isn’t to say there aren’t duds among them, such as the abysmal “Positoovity,” but the ratio of good to bad is notably improved over the first act. Although he’s only truly in one scene, the actor who played the French chef definitely stole the show with his dedication and comedic timing. This song and performance was thoroughly entertaining and what I wished the show would have represented as a whole.

Disney’s The Little Mermaid is at the Orpheum Theatre though October 13, 2015. Tickets start at $39.

DEAL ALERT: Discount tickets are available via Goldstar, ticket lottery and student/educator rush tickets.