THE LITTLE MERMAID Reviews

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 6:57pm

London's Financial Times (like this makes a difference) is mixed-to-negative, with high praise for Tituss Burgess, Norm Lewis, and the designers.

"The Little Mermaid barged on to Broadway this week – and neither sank nor swam. It is perhaps fitting for a fairy tale focused on a hybrid life form that its musical incarnation should be so thoroughly neither-nor. It’s not squarely for children (too slow at times), yet definitely not built for adults (too lacking in wit). It is neither a travesty of the 1989 animated Disney feature on which it is based nor a successful re-imagining.

Most worthy of a crisp salute are the designers: George Tsypin for sets, Tatiana Noginova for costumes, Natasha Katz for lighting. For this Hans Christian Andersen-inspired tale – a young mermaid named Ariel must defy her father and escape an evil sea witch to capture the heart of a human prince – a waterless stage conceit was hatched. Using multimedia projections, streaming clear plastic strips and bizarrely entrancing corkscrew columns to anchor the staging, Tsypin and director Francesca Zambello move us from above water to below with barely a hitch..."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8157138c-bfa3-11dc-8052-0000779fd2ac.html

[jaystarr]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:09pm

oh there you are.....


okay... WELCOME to....

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:12pm

I wonder if Brantley will be as sarcastic with MERMAID as he was with POPPINS.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:12pm

Ha, gonna make sure you started this one, huh?

[B3TA07]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:15pm

"Ha, gonna make sure you started this one, huh?"

What?

[Katurian2]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:16pm

Yankee always starts the review threads!

[jaystarr]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:17pm

Will Brantley review TLM? or Isherwood?

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:18pm

It'll most probably be Brantley: he usually gets the big shows (unless Isherwood reviewed them in a previous incarnation).

[jaystarr]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:18pm

Yankee is Margo's understudy....

Margo might just be runing late....

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:22pm

Positive from the AP -

"NEW YORK (AP) — You try singing and dancing while wearing a tail. More than a little difficult. Yet "The Little Mermaid" — tail intact — amiably swims along on good cheer and charm.

The long-awaited stage version of the 1989 Disney animated film, which opened Thursday at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, may have a few uneasy moments shoehorning the story in between all that lavish, and some might say unnecessary, underwater spectacle.
...
Boggess not only possesses a lovely voice, she can handle comedy, too. Humor slips sporadically into Doug Wright's efficient book which fills in some of the gaps in the film's story line. Most of the jokes are provided by Sherie Rene Scott as Ursula the sea witch, played as sort of a campy, water-logged Norma Desmond, with a bit of Mae West thrown in for good measure.

Scott is a marvelous comedian, yet she seems a bit lost in the garish makeup and an excess of costume, especially some unwieldily tentacles, designed by Tatiana Noginova. Still, she gets to sing the catchiest of the new musical numbers, "I Want the Good Times Back," aided by a pair of conniving eels who are played by Derrick Baskin and Tyler Maynard."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j5eE1CgJb_5qbhdV3mzB9J10HzjQD8U3B4G00

[Elphie3]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:23pm

Variety's up! - Pretty bad in a "softening the blow way"

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935774.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

"Flying fishtails! Well, not exactly. Instead, the singing sirens of "The Little Mermaid" glide about on Heelys, their arms whirling in faux balletic motion, occasionally accompanied by the thwack of an errant fin or tail punishing some hapless ensemble member. If those figures sound more like Ice Capades refugees than the enchanting inhabitants of a persuasively rendered, magical underwater kingdom, then that's part of the problem with Disney's latest bid for Broadway residency. The massive brand power of the beloved 1989 animated feature might make disappointment over the show's diluted charms irrelevant. But the impression remains that this is a case of winning material hitched to the wrong creative team.
...
That might not matter to girls eager to lose themselves in Ariel's princess journey, or to generations looking to revisit a film that cast its spell over them as children, so the Lunt-Fontanne likely will have a tenant for some time to come. But it's a missed opportunity in that one of Disney's strongest properties never comes close to repeating its transporting experience onscreen."

Updated On: 1/10/08 at 07:23 PM

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:34pm

Edit that - put it in quotes and shorten.

That aside, it's a spot-on review. Updated On: 1/10/08 at 07:34 PM

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:37pm

What is it about Disney musicals that causes good writers to suck?

...

Does anyone know?

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:42pm

The necessity to fill in the blanks of the plot.

Wright avoided it with Grey Gardens and it worked wonders. Too bad he couldn't with this.

[B3TA07]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:43pm

New sig:

"
The overall effect is that of a department store holiday window conjured by some display queen with artistic pretensions and a plastic fetish..."

[Rose_MacShane]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:43pm

Good lord, there are 4 Flounders?? Isn't that a little much?

[Elphie3]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:47pm

I think they're bringing two new ones in while they phase the other two out.

[Rose_MacShane]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:50pm

They're already phasing out JJ and Cody? The show hasn't even officially opened yet! That's some high turnaround...

[Elphie3]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 7:54pm

I know!!!!!!

"If Only" they were phasing out the director...

[MarkK]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 8:11pm

amNY "Very Negative"

Disney Flops under the Sea

The Disney musicals just keep getting worse. We go through the same routine again and again: pick out a trendy director, add a bunch of bland songs to make a 90-minute film into a two-and-a-half hour mishap, recruit some legitimate Broadway singers, and poof! Just like Sweeney Todd slicing his victims to bits, another beloved Disney animated film bites the dust and is turned into a ridiculous corporate-minded spectacle.

amNY Updated On: 1/10/08 at 08:11 PM

[ljay889]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 8:15pm

WOW. That (The amNY) was a really NEGATIVE review. Flat out, hated it.

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 8:17pm

But even in the seemingly failsafe area of the campy villainess, Wright's book falters. Ursula doesn't match the gleeful treachery of her screen counterpart, who was right up there with Cruella De Vil on the evil-ometer. And Scott -- flanked by reptile-like eels Flotsam (Tyler Maynard) and Jetsam (Derrick Baskin) -- often struggles with intended zingers that fall flat.

Ouch!

[H.Higgins]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 8:26pm

From the Variety review:

"That might not matter to girls eager to lose themselves in Ariel's princess journey, or to generations looking to revisit a film that cast its spell over them as children, so the Lunt-Fontanne likely will have a tenant for some time to come. But it's a missed opportunity in that one of Disney's strongest properties never comes close to repeating its transporting experience onscreen."

Really sums up what I've been feeling/thinking about this show through all the debating. Of course it's going to have a healthy run, but how sad that an opportunity to do something simply extraordinary was missed. Disney botched that and they're the ones that should have wanted to knock it out of the park. It's kind of devastating.

[MarkK]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 9:15pm

TheaterMania is "Negative"

The large-scale adaptation of the Disney animated classic comes very close to utter mediocrity.
TM

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 9:17pm

Negative from Theatermania:

"Aided by fellow creatures like seagull Scuttles (Eddie Korbich), crab Sebastian (the lively Tituss Burgess) and little fish Flounder (Brian D'Addario at this performance) -- but not encouraged by dad King Triton (Norm Lewis) -- Ariel makes an ill-advised bargain with her aunt, the banished sea witch Ursula (Sherie Rene Scott). The deal is that Ariel willfully trades the gorgeous singing voice that enchanted Eric for three days of land legs, during which she must get the prince to kiss her -- or face dire consequences. Her seeming undoing now takes place at a singing contest where young women of the dominion vie for Eric's had, but putative winner Ariel can't participate because her voice is locked in Ursula's black-magic shell.

The real people rounded up for this live-action effort work hard as they can, many of them wearing Heelys-inspired footwear in order to skim over the floor as if fin-propelled. And there are a couple of true scene-stealers present. D'Addario, who shares his role with three other young lads, jocularly belts "She's in Love" with the Mersisters chorus. Korbich, who was so much fun in The Drowsy Chaperone, is ill-used in the first act but comes into his own at the start of act two, when he takes the "Possitoovity" song-and-dance lead.

Many patrons will love what Scott, once of Disney's Aida, does as scheming Ursula with her arachnid-suggestive tentacles. Tyler Maynard and Derrick Baskin slither nicely as her evil electric eels, Flotsam and Jetsam. The marvelous Lewis, always clinging to Triton's schlocky silver triton, looks virile in his bare-chested costume but is underused underwater. As the romantic leads, Boggess and Palmer are charismatic only in so far as their characters are styled to be charismatic. Nothing is wrong with their chirping and terping, but they seem very much in keeping with the Disney strategy of eventually slipping replacements into key slots without anyone really noticing."