The Little Mermaid on Broadway
Having watched a boot of the Little Mermaid on Broadway, I managed to catch about 10 minutes of it before the audio syncing issues really got to me and I stopped. I’m sorry, but judging from those first 10 minutes (and intermittent glimpses of other scenes) I can’t help but feel like we’ve been shortchanged by having this nonsense on stage in place of Beauty and the Beast.
The first scene that I managed to get through was, quite predictably, ‘Fathoms Below’. You have an enormous, cheesy looking ship with blue chiffon at the bottom which are supposed to be waves. It felt like watching a bunch of high school kids doing a musical with a larger than average budget. I think they tried to make Eric look handsome by giving him a baggy shirt that shows off his chest every once in a while, but not with that hair (they gave Eric long hair, and in an attempt to keep some resemblance to the animated version, they decided to curl his fringe. He just looked hilarious).
Anyway, after the song, there’s dialogue. Eric talks of wanting to meet the girl of his dreams, the princely life is not for him, etc etc. His friends dissuade him, etc etc. Ariel’s disjointed voice then echoes from the speakers.
Then Eric goes, and I quote: “Follow that voice; to the ends of the earth if you have to!”
I burst out laughing when I heard that. Yeah, face treacherous waters, get shipwrecked, and have all your men drown because of a funny sounding voice you heard 5 seconds ago? Not happening.
I remember reading an article somewhere about TLM wanting to be more Italian(?) Opera-ish in terms of design and costuming. I’m not sure when that got kicked in the head, because the costumes look awful. Everything’s a shiny mess of sequins and satin, Ariel’s tail sticks out of her butt and looks like it was constructed for the Ghost Lantern Festival, Ursula’s tentacles are wires for an oversized wedding dress, and I’m not sure what they did with poor Sebastian. I think my eyes may have tricked me, but I think they gave Sebastian a Persian hat with eyeballs sticking out of it.
As usual, the singers do a brilliant job, which isn’t surprising, seeing as this is a Broadway musical and Disney’s loaded with cash to hire said brilliant singers. What I was disappointed though, was the orchestrations for ‘Her Voice’ (the only song which I played through, next to ‘Fathoms Below’). Maybe I’ve been too used to the Concept Cast Recording, but the full orchestra took the mystic and romance away somewhat. It became just another loud, bombastic, kitschy song about love. There’s nothing ethereal about it anymore, and that aspect was something which I greatly loved about that song. I thought if they’d just keep it to that simple piano melody and throw in a couple of violins it’ll do just fine. It’s a minimalistic song, not a ‘Kiss the Girl’ remake!
Of course, take this at face value, given that I am a huge Beauty and the Beast fan, and TLM might have bittered my view somewhat. Also, I probably watched this about a month ago, so my memory will definitely play tricks on me. But whatever. I thought I should get this out.
ETA: Apparently the NY Times didn’t like it either.
