Today we celebrated our (June 12) anniversary with tickets to see The Little Mermaid, the New England premiere of the Broadway musical, on stage at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly.
I was excited to see it as I hadn't seen it since the pre-Broadway tryout in Denver in August 2007. I knew some changes had been made since and I wanted to see if I could pick up on them. Plus, this theatre is in the round, so I was curious to see how they'd do the effects, such as the change from mermaid to human.
The first noticeable change was that the show started not with Fathoms Below, as the movie does and as I recalled the show having started, but with "The World Above," another Ariel solo written for the stage that wishes it was "Part of Your World." The decision to move this made for a nice applause moment as Ariel emerged from a trapdoor on her rock right out of the overture, but later didn't make any sense that she would remember the concert before we saw the concert. Also, Flounder was played by an adult on a skateboard (as opposed to a kid splitting the role,) which was fine ... until they added lines in that made it clear the Flounder had a crush on Ariel. Ewwww ... And it didn't make "She's In Love" (still my favorite of the new tunes) as much fun (but it was still fun.)
As for "Fathoms Below," which came after "The World Above," the "Pilot" had a phenomenal voice (a check of the program at intermission showed that he was the King Triton understudy - King Triton also had a fabulous baritone voice) and they did the ship scene by having the wheel movable and then they made it look like the boat was tilting with their body reactions.
Because of the fact you could see everything on the stage, it made it not as believable that Sebastian wouldn't see Ariel for "Daughters of Triton," although the actor seemed like he was trying not to look at where she should be - conducting toward off-stage.
They threw in "If Only," following "Daughters of Triton," and one thing I liked about the Denver version was that that quartet with its great lyrics came out of nowhere in Act II. We would hear it one other time in Act I, right before Flotsam and Jetsam showed up on Wheelies to sing "Sweet Child." (They were my favorites - them and Ariel's awesome red wig - "Anne" needed that wig in Charlottetown's Anne and Gilbert, with a few inches cut off.) As for how the other actors moved, the mermaids/mermen just had long dresses on (no fins like in the Broadway production) and they would push their bodies forward and back every so often. Scuttle flew back and forth (he was also able to turn 360 on the wire) and Ariel flew for "Part of Your World" (at the bridge) and the change (she kicked off her dress and a miniskirt appeared underneath.)
Another noticeable change was that "I Want The Good Times Back," (like "Poor Unfortunate Souls," a nice, jaunty villain tune that moves the story along) was replaced with "Daddy's Little Angel," which was quite dark in that it told how Ursula killed all her female siblings before knocking off Papa Poseidon - quite a different backstory from Poseidon dividing up the kingdom between Ursula and Triton before Triton banished Ursula. A good change was that when she rose from the floor she was decked out in an outfit looking like the movie Ursula (purple and black) and she was played by the actress Dad and I saw in The Drowsy Chaperone who played Trix (Kecia Lewis), so I have her autograph. She rocked "Poor Unfortunate Souls" as she had that perfect bluesy/belty voice like movie voice Pat Carroll.
After the show, I realized there had been only one Scuttle number ("Human Stuff" from Act I had been cut;) - the dancing in "Positoovity," which still kicked off Act II, was great. Another highlight was when "big Ursula" emerged - giant windsock-like legs enveloped Ariel and took her down the trapdoor. I didn't enjoy "Kiss the Girl," as much as it was just Scuttle and Sebastian singing around the moving boat and you didn't see any of the sea creatures - just heard them. And the biggest travesty of all - the beautiful intro words were changed to: "Percussion... Winds... Moonlight." It's WORDS!!! WINDS. WORDS!!!
It was only after the show that I read in the program that since the Broadway production closed "there have been a handful of regional productions that Disney has been in support of where significant revisions were made to improve the story telling on stage. We are incredibly lucky to be among only a few theaters to get the rights to this updated version."
But WORDS!
And the Flounder crush!
So no A for Ariel, but a
B+
POSTED BY COLLEEN
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