I never saw
The Little Mermaid, but I have seen Sherie in
Aida,
The Last Five Years (three times),
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (twice),
Landscape of the Body (twice), and
Everyday Rapture (four times between Second Stage and Broadway) and she's never once given anything less than 100% on stage.
And to answer the original question, the show works just fine in this space. Better than I would have expected, actually.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body