Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
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music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman & Glenn Slater, book by Doug Wright & Glenn Casale, directed by Ann Hodges
Drayton Entertainment, Dunfield Theatre, Cambridge
November 27-December 21, 2014
Sebastian: “Darling, it’s better down where it’s wetter”
Drayton Entertainment has scored another coup by presenting the Canadian premiere of the new 2012 version of The Little Mermaid. The musical is based on the 1989 Disney animated feature of the same name and on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen on which the film is based. Of Howard Menken’s three stage versions of Disney films, The Little Mermaid is more serious in tone and more moving than his Aladdin of 2011 or his Beauty and the Beast of 1994. Drayton has come up with a beautifully imagined, well-cast production that provides family entertainment on a very high level.
The stage version of The Little Mermaid premiered in New York in 2008. In 2012 the book and production were completely revised by Glenn Casale and this is now the official licensed version. Just as the Disney film differs significantly from the original fairy tale, so does the revised stage musical differ from the Disney film. Casale’s revisions all help to tell the story more clearly and to give the musical more impact on stage. The result now seems less like a Broadway musical than a classic operetta. This is all to the good since it gives the work a more elevated tone.
In the musical the little mermaid Ariel (Jayme Armstrong) disobeys the decree of her father Triton (Marcus Nance) to stay away from the water’s surface where she has the habit of idealizing what life on land would be like. The seagull Scuttle (Keith Savage) thinks himself an authority of all things human and gives her comically wrong information about human ways. Her first contact with a human comes when Prince Eric (David Cotton), who sails the sea trying to locate the source of a beautiful singing voice (Ariel’s), falls overboard in a storm and Ariel saves him from drowning and swims away before he can thank her.
Angered by Ariel’s behaviour, Triton appoints the court composer, the crab Sebastian (Mark Cassius), to guard her constantly. Realizing she is in love with Eric, she visits the sea witch, the octopus Ursula (Kristen Peace). Ursula’s bargain is that she will give Ariel legs and lungs to live on land for three days. If she cannot receive true love’s kiss from Eric in that time, she will return to the sea and be forever Ursula’s slave. All Ariel has to give up for those three days is her voice. Ariel agrees. Once on the surface, Eric takes her in as a presumed sole survivor of a shipwreck. Although he is falling in love with the mute girl, he is still entranced by the voice he hears coming from the ocean (kept in Ursula’s magic shell) and thus assumes that the mute girl and the owner of the voice are two different people.
The reason for this backstory is to help lead the musical to a happy ending which does not happen in Rusalka or in the original story. It takes some of the burden of making the decision to be human from the mermaid and relates it to the larger battle between brother and sister. In so doing it reduces the need for the mermaid to be punished for a longing against nature. The sibling conflict makes the exposition too long and it also changes the point of the story from the perils of unlawful desire to a reconciliation between Triton and Ariel, father and daughter, and the truth that parents eventually have to let their children live their own lives. The sadness of the original story’s ending of the mermaid not at home on land or in the sea changes to the more specific pain of a father having to allow his daughter to live in a completely different world.
While Disney’s happy ending necessarily simplifies the story, few parents will mind that their children do not have to deal with the question of how long it will take the mermaid to obtain an eternal soul that ends Andersen’s tale or the eternal limbo for the mermaid that ends Rusalka.
Drayton’s production is quite elaborate with a cast of 22 adults plus a children’s chorus of 25. As is required in productions of Disney properties, J. Branson’s sets and Leon Dobkowski’s costumes, originally for Music Theatre Wichita, reflect the elaborate designs of the 1989 animated film. Kevin Fraser’s lighting is essential in creating the atmosphere of the below-sea and above-worlds. While there is no credit for projections, the production makes use of animated projections both on the front curtain and on the back wall of the stage. Often those on the front curtain depict incidents via animation that would be very difficult to depict on stage, such as Ariel’s rescue of the drowning Eric from the bottom of the sea. Over-dependance on video would be a mistake, but luckily, in addition to projections of filmed waves crashing on the shore, Hodges and her creative team also use theatre techniques like long blue banners streaming across the stage and schools of fish on sticks to depict the underwater realm.
The show is very well cast with many Drayton favourites in key roles. One of these is Jayme Armstrong, Drayton’s Mary Poppins in 2013 and Fantine in Les Misérables this year, who plays Ariel. With her pure, high operetta-like voice, clear diction and prim demeanour, she will immediately remind viewers of a young Julie Andrews. She has a delightful stage presence that creates an immediate bond with the audience and a lovely voice that is capable of conveying the longing of the show’s big tune, “Part of Your World”.
David Cotton, Marius in Drayton’s Les Miz, returns as Prince Eric, attractive in both voice and bearing. Cotton and Armstrong have a strong onstage chemistry that helps them maintain the attitude of longing for a kiss throughout the whole length of the number “Kiss the Girl”.
Mark Cassius is amusing as an easily befuddled Sebastian. His fine voice leads two of the musical’s best-known choruses – “Under the Sea” and “Kiss the Girl” – his Jamaican accent perfectly suited to the Caribbean flavour of the songs. (What a Jamaican crab is doing in the North Sea is a question Disney doesn’t answer.) Sebastian’s avian counterpart is Drayton favourite Keith Savage as Scuttle. Savage makes the most of Scuttle’s (mistaken) belief in his expertise in all things human and relishes the mispronunciations of choice words that pepper the seagull’s speech.
13-year-old Aidan Tye makes a very impressive Flounder, a youngster clearly enamoured of Ariel but too embarrassed to say anything about it. Of the actors he is best at maintaining flowing arm movements whenever he is in the sea. Nick Settimi may feature in only one scene as the maniacal Chef Louis, but he makes that scene hilarious.
Though the romantic story will likely appeal more to girls than boys, the musical is so filled with colourful visual effects, movement and memorable tunes that it should please children of both sexes and all ages. Don’t rush out of the theatre too quickly because the Dunfield Theatre gives young theatregoers the chance to have their pictures taken with members of the cast in the lobby after the show.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) David Cotton as Prince Eric and Jayme Armstrong as Ariel; Thomas Alderson as Jetsam, Kristen Peace as Ursula and Gregory Pember as Flotsam; Keith Savage as Scuttle. ©2014 Hilary Gould-Camilleri.
For tickets, visit www.draytonentertainment.com.
2014-11-30
The Little Mermaid