The Little Mermaid (Preview Performance)

Original Post Date: August 10, 2007

The first thing you see as you walk into the theatre is an amazing black curtain with glowing blue and purple sea creatures on it. It's gorgeous! I knew from the start, though, that I was going to miss a few things. Our seats were one row from the very top of the Ellie. That's the nosebleed section times 10! They had built their own little spotlight booth and it was rigged to hang from the ceiling. I couldn't see the top of the proscenium, and hoped I would still be able to see everything. Well, when the curtain opened on Prince Eric's ship, I couldn't see their heads!!! The ship was suspended in the air with fiberglass waves below. I'm sure it looks incredible from the orchestra seats (where I'll be seeing the show from on Sept. 1st.) The coolest part of the ship was at the end of "Fathoms Below", when it flew up and the faux water moved up as well. I really like I was plunging deep into the ocean. The set is absolutely revolutionary. How can you possibly do a show that takes place half underwater without doing something incredible with the set? 3M corp. made the fiberglass set pieces. When you get the lights on them, the iridescent quality is simply gorgeous. I really can't say enough about the set. They've done a phenomenal job on it! I especially liked Ariel's treasure trove, with all it's funny shaped objects she had collected. I don't think it's a coincidence that over half of them were shoes of some kind. Another thing that was really cool were these moving tree-like set pieces. They had two arms coming out that moved up and down. They were used several times, both under the ocean and on land. Very effective every time, too.

On to the costumes…I had wondered since I first heard about the show how in the world they were going to create mermaids for the stage. And then when I heard that they wouldn't be flying? How was this going to work? Well…it's ingenious, really. Everyone wears those little wheelie shoes! They sometimes walk, and sometime glide across the stage. It's like a roller ballet! And you really get the feeling that they are swimming! Brilliant! I wasn't too crazy at first about the mermaid tails sticking out like bustles behind their skirts, but apparently that looks better from the main floor, too. When Ariel is in her lair, at one point she's talking to Sebastian and she's laying across the hole in the set piece. You can't see her skirt, but you can see her mermaid tail swaying behind her. It looks totally cool! I loved it! After that, the mermaid tails didn't bug me so much. The costume I had a huge problem with was Flounder's. He didn't look like a fish! When everyone else has costume pieces that allude to fish or mermaids, to have the Flounder sporting a big yellow t-shirt, baggy shorts, wheelie sneakers, and bright blue faux-hawk just doesn't cut it. They obviously spared no expense on the other costumes, why does Flounder look like some kind of hip-hop mogul on wheels? Hopefully they can fix that. He just needs…fish parts. That's all! Scuttle's costume was great, though. A beak hat, kind of feathery vest and shorts, striped tights and big ol' mismatched clown shoes. Totally cute! And when he tap-danced in the clown shows…classic! Loved it! Ursula's costume was amazing, if a bit cumbersome. But she's an octopus, so how could it not be cumbersome? There were several sets of tentacles, depending on what she had to be doing. Some worked, some were weird. But all in all, an amazing costume. The coolest costumes, though, came during "Under the Sea" and "Kiss the Girl." The various fish and animals were gorgeous without being too "Lion King." Hats and other pieces allude to the animals without using puppetry. Very effective! The costumes I couldn't figure out, though, were the maid costumes. I thought they were chickens! The skirts were crazy big and bouncy. There's no way to describe them except…they looked like chickens. Cool, but weird.

The Cast: Sierra Boggess is the perfect Ariel. She absolutely captured the various stages of Ariel's character development…from flighty mermaid to tortured soul to the human who is in absolute awe of everything around her. She has a beautiful voice and she channeled Jodi Benson just enough to make Ariel just as loveable, but gave her a little more of her own touch. The new songs for Ariel totally help with the character development. Eddie Korbich plays Scuttle, and he absolutely amazes me. Here's this goofy looking, short, middle-aged guy and he has such command of the stage. He steals every scene he's in. He has an incredible energy, and everyone onstage with him just feeds off it. He has some of the best musical numbers in the show! Sherie Rene Scott as Ursula is AWESOME! She rocks my socks. It was obvious that she is still fighting the costume. She's only had it for a week or so, so I can totally understand that. (And I totally empathize with someone having an awkward costume. Hello! I was a PLATE in Beauty and the Beast!) And the character wasn't quite right. Ursula needs to get under your skin. I kinda felt bad for her, and you should never feel bad for the villain. But this is Sherie Rene Scott. She's amazing…she'll work it out. Now, with the guy playing Eric, Sean Palmer, I only had a slight problem with. His characterization was perfect, but there was just something not right with his voice. It was a little too…strained? I can't quite put my finger on it. He's a tenor and lacked a little bit of power that I expected for the role. And he strained a bit on the bigger stuff. But his Act One solo, "Her Voice" is absolutely to die for. (Someone sing it about me, please!!!) I can forgive the vocal stuff, though, because he really nailed the character.

The songs: All the old favorites are there. They added a few in Act One, which pushed "Under the Sea" later than it appears in the movie. There are a lot of new songs in Act Two, which makes sense. In the movie, there are more songs in the first 20 minutes than in the last hour. That's a lot of time to fill when you're making a stage musical. I especially loved what I call "Ariel's Inner Monologue songs". It's would totally defeat everything if Ariel was totally silent during Act. 2. You want to know what's going on in her head. So she sings…and you're really reading her thoughts. It's an amazingly awesome choice and I loved the songs! The song "If Only", which ends up being a duet with Eric, and then a quartet with the addition of Triton and Sebastian made me cry. The song parallels my life a LITTLE too much at this moment in time. If they end up cutting that song, I'll have to hurt someone. The best additions, entertainment-wise, are Scuttle's songs. "Human Stuff" is adorable. And the first song of Act Two, when Ariel has just become human, the seagulls sing "Posituvly" (or something like that. I don't have my program handy at the moment.) The song is awesome…and has the best dancing of the show, hands down. How often to you see people tap dancing in clown shoes…seriously. It rocks!

The plot: There have been a few changes. I especially like the addition of Eric teaching Ariel that it's okay that she can't talk. He shows her that dancing is a way to communicate. I loved that! It really makes her seem less…handicapped. She can't tell Eric with words that she loves him, but she can show him with dancing. Highly effective and a good message. One of the problems with the show is at the plot is slightly disjointed. It jumps around a lot. It's not as smooth of a transition between the two worlds as it could be. I'm sure they are trying to work that out. I don't envy the production staff one tiny bit! The biggest thing, and this will be a show-killer if they don't figure out a way to fix it, is the climax. There isn't one. Not that I could see, anyway. The climax should be when Ursula gets killed. There was no build up to it, first of all. Ursula just shows up and pretty much says "Time's up! You're mine now!" She doesn't come as "Vanessa" to woo Eric. Ariel doesn't get turned back into a mermaid. She just destroys the magic shell and that kills Ursula. It's very abrupt and not a climax at all. Then everything just kind of rushes to the finish. Eric proposes, Ariel's voice comes back, and they all live happily ever after. It's a huge let down. I really think that Ariel needs to turn back into a mermaid, even though I know that's a costuming nightmare. The battle with Ursula needs to be bigger. Her demise is cool, but they need to slow it down. And one of the best parts of the movie needs to be put back in…where Triton says that the only problem is how much he's going to miss her and then changes her back into a human so she can be with Eric. I love that part! Right now it's kind of a "Woo hoo! Let's get married now" kind of thing when it really needs some better, more fulfilling closure. They've written themselves in a corner, and I hope they can get it worked out before they get to Broadway. The kind of ending it is now will not fly with New York audiences. The general Colorado audiences probably aren't picking up on what's going on. They may not even realize what's missing. But I can see it…and I hope they can find a good resolution to the problem. This show has amazing potential. They've done a great job, but it just needs that ending tweaked. I'm hoping that when I see the show again on September 1st, they'll have it worked out. If not by then, they still have a couple months before it opens on Broadway. Someone has got to the find the solution by then, or else the critics are going to tear the show to pieces. A bad ending will kill a show in a heartbeat, now matter how good the rest of it is! The finale is the last thing the audience takes with them as they leave. It's the last thing they remember. If it's lacking, even a little bit, it clouds their judgement of the whole show…whether they realize it or not!

All in the all, the show is an amazing feat. I've been so excited to see how it would all work. They have done a great job of bring the movie and the stage together. The good out-weighs the bad…except for the ending. But I have no worries. They'll fix it. Oh, and I absolutely LOVE being able to see the process. Seeing a pre-Broadway engagement of a show is a dream come true for a theatre geek like myself. The very fact that I got to see the show before New York sees it totally makes my whole year!