The whole "princess" thing: Disney has been pushing the "princess" branding for about three years now, taking the characters like Ariel, Jasmine, Cinderella, and Belle and treating them as some kind of commercial collective, with more manufactured crap aimed at that 6-12 year old little girl demographic. Walk into any toy store, and you'll find Princess totes, Princess DVDs, Princess costumes, Princess figurines. It's Disney's reponse to Mattel and Barbie.
Tarzan doesnt figure into it, not because little boys think Disney is gay, but because it just doesnt have the same marketing push behind it. Tarzan isnt as well known a Disney "brand" as Little Mermaid, not by a long shot... because Disney is honing its marketing more and more to that little girl audience. Look at their next big film: "The Frog Prince", whch will be set in New Orleans. Wanna know why? It's so they can develop a "Black" princess character for the pantheon. Pocohantas is their "native American" princess. Jasmine is their "middle eastern" princess. Mulan is their "asian" princess. They want to make sure they have all of their minority bases covered.
And sadly it works. The shows and movies might be dull as dishwater, but those little girls will bring their parents in droves. That's one of the reasons TARZAN flopped, I'm sure. Little boys dont like theatre, and little girls didnt like TARZAN the film. It was a demographic mis-fire.
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A lot of tourists have thoroughly enjoyed it, and a large amount of the people who don't like the show are the critics ... as well as locals, Im sure, who have either (1) seen the show or (2) heard the word of mouth. What do you think killed COMPANY?
No, I've not seen MERMAID. I've seen the various photos and videos available on the internet, and I'm sorry but this thing is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too heavy a visual conceit for a show that should have been light and easy. But it's also clear they wanted a companion piece to LION KING, because so much of the show *looks* like Taymor's work as re-interpreted by someone who doesnt understand what Taymor pulled off far more successfully. If you look at Zambello's work (and Zambello has a web site so you can see it), it's all very big and very heavy and more often than not ponderous. But I'm betting Zambello got this gig because of LITTLE PRINCE, which was almost a blip on the resume -- but even that took subject material that was pretty light and simple and made it into an operatic extravaganza, which IMHO killed the score. It was reminiscent of what the first production of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA was like at the new Met.
And Typsin's work just underscored every fear I had. Instead of using materials that flowed to suggest water, he goes for plastics: hard edged, hard lined, completely the opposite of what *should* have been on that stage. It's like the "ooo! bright! shiny!" approach instead of thinking, okay, what's going to give the water effect? Sorry, big, big disappointment because, for the most part, I love his work, because it's so conceptual and stylishly out there. But this time he was waaaay off his game. It may look, at first glance, stunning, but then you have to ask the harder question: is it supporting the material? Or is it just pretty for pretty's sake?
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