THE LITTLE MERMAID Reviews- Page 3

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:33pm

Newsday is negative:

"On the way into "The Little Mermaid," audiences - that is, little girls old enough to read - can enjoy a poster proclaiming this witty bit of mer-marketing: "Sometimes the hardest thing about falling in love is taking the first step."

Alas, it is even harder to fall in love with the show. In fact, the most amazing part of Disney's latest musical is its amazing shortage of originality - not to mention magic or cross-generational wit."

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/stage/ny-etlede5532024jan11,0,7719603.story

[B3TA07]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:36pm

This further enforces my theory that munkustrap is Brantley.

[BrianS]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:36pm

he's merciless? have you read some of your own posts? :)

[H.Higgins]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:38pm

"I love Brantley, but he is merciless."

AS HE SHOULD BE! I'm sorry, but this show is a failure in all ways other than financial (because sadly it's going to continue raking in the revenue). Disney had all the resources to make this simply incredible and they stopped trying with this show. That put up mediocrity and said "It's good enough." I've been a Disney fan since childhood, but in this instance, they've made me sick.

[Katurian2]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:38pm

B3TA- haha, You are sooo right! Alright Mr. Brantley, time to come out from under that username!

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:39pm

2.5 stars from USA Today

"NEW YORK — The arrival of a new Disney musical on Broadway is always met with high expectations and sharpened knives. The Little Mermaid (**½ out of four), which opened Thursday at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, would seem especially ripe for the former.
The stage adaptation of the animated film, based on Hans Christian Andersen's classic tale, boasts a sterling creative team. It includes Alan Menken, the composer responsible for some of the catchiest tunes written for the Mickey Mouse empire in recent decades, and librettist Doug Wright, whose credits include the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife and last season's excellent Grey Gardens.

But the new Mermaid is ultimately less than the sum of its impressive parts, offering neither the richly imaginative spectacle of The Lion King nor the old-fashioned vitality and charm of Mary Poppins."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2008-01-10-little-mermaid_N.htm

[harvester7]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:45pm

The Brantley quote is from The Little Mermaid's page on the Times's website--the links to the full review aren't up yet.

http://theater2.nytimes.com/gst/theater/tdetails.html?id=1154674519658

[Katurian2]

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

Darn it! :P

[adamgreer]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 10:56pm

Wait...he liked Tarzan and Aida more? Wow...that review will really be something if that is how he felt.

[B3TA07]

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

So close, Katurian. This is not as easy as uncovering the 9/11 conspiracy.

[Katurian2]

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

:)

[billynj]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:04pm

negative ....



'Little Mermaid': On Broadway, Just A Fish Out of Water

Who's Blogging» Links to this article
By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 11, 2008; Page C01

NEW YORK -- Disney's shimmering movie megahit for the kindergarten set, "The Little Mermaid," seemed a natural for Broadway, what with its endearing marine-world love story and all that cheerfully animated seafood, fluttering its fins to the steel-drum lilt of "Under the Sea."

Somewhere out there in the choppy foam, however, the creators of the new stage version that opened last night at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre let the compass slip overboard. In director Francesca Zambello's confused production -- a morass of mechanical characters, syrupy new songs and gaudily irrelevant set pieces -- all the warmth and charm of the film manages to get away.

The bloated, 2 1/2 -hour show -- an hour longer than the 1989 movie -- represents a low watermark for the Disney-on-Broadway franchise. "The Little Mermaid" is the sixth in a stage-musical line that began 14 years ago with the opening of "Beauty and the Beast." (A seventh, "King David," was a song cycle that made a cameo appearance on 42nd Street.)

An artistic peak was reached in Julie Taymor's resplendent "The Lion King" in 1997, but the subsequent shows -- "Aida," "Tarzan" and "Mary Poppins" -- have all been pallid or overproduced. ("The Lion King" might have left a lingering curse of high expectations.) "The Little Mermaid" is the most disappointing of all, partly because of the magnitude of the imaginative delights on screen. But also because, in the adding of so many unmemorable numbers and clunky turns of plot and even in the shamelessly borrowing from Taymor, this adaptation feels like such a cut-and-paste job.

Zambello's "Little Mermaid" lurches from song to song: The original score by composer Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman has been souped up with about a dozen new tunes, by Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater. (None is as good as the Menken-Ashman work in songs such as "Part of Your World" and "Kiss the Girl.") The Big Idea here has to do with how the actors propel themselves through the numbers. They're all on Heelys, those sneakers with the built-in wheels in their heels. The footwear allows them to glide across the stage, a clever solution to how to simulate the locomotion of underwater creatures.

Even here, though, "The Little Mermaid" is a victim of stolid planning. The activity ends up looking more like skating than it does like swimming -- just as this "Mermaid" ends up feeling less like a product meant for Broadway than for another sphere of entertainment: Disney on Ice.

Geared as it is to a 5-year-old's sensibility, the stage version creates a water world of flimsy pageantry: shiny surfaces, plastic images and ornate thingamajigs. Throughout the evening, a strange pair of sculpted poles with armatures are shoved on and off the stage. Sometimes, actors playing fish float on plates attached to the ends of the armature. The poles also show up as unflattering furnishings in the scenes at the castle of Prince Eric (Sean Palmer), the young aristocrat with whom Ariel, the little mermaid (Sierra Boggess), falls in love. A sun assembled by set designer George Tsypin, from what appear to be metallic triangles, swivels in these scenes to become a chandelier.

Tatiana Noginova's costumes range from the inept -- there's nothing to suggest crustacean in Tituss Burgess's getup as Sebastian the anxious crab -- to plain off-putting: The women of Eric's castle dress as if swallowing cotton balls were a fashion statement.

The talented Doug Wright (a Pulitzer winner for "I Am My Own Wife," no less) was recruited to contribute the script for the musical, which in general follows the outline of the film. Ariel, against the wishes of her royal father, looks for a way to become a member of the absolutely fabulous human race. She gets a chance after rescuing the drowning Eric and becoming a pawn in a plan by evil, tentacled Ursula (Sherie Rene Scott) to wrest control of the oceans from Ariel's father, King Triton (Norm Lewis).

The cramming in of so many new songs seems to have impeded Wright's efforts to create characters of any depth, or to resolve the plot mechanics in a manner that makes much sense. (Then again, it's questionable how much narrative logic the target, post-toddler audience requires.) Uncannily, Palmer and especially Boggess resemble their cartoon predecessors, and they're not asked for much more than that in the way of characterization.

Fine Broadway singer-actors such as Scott and Lewis have been marooned in impossible roles. Although both play characters at the top of the sea-world food chain, neither one can escape the impression of being ensnared in some kind of a trap.

A stagnant sensation extends to the conception of entire numbers. For the second act's "Kiss the Girl," Zambello seeks to conjure Taymor's "Circle of Life" by posing actors as various kinds of marine life, with some, in "Lion King"-style, wearing the essence of the animal on their heads. Imitation, in this instance, is the sincerest sign of desperation.


Updated On: 1/10/08 at 11:04 PM

[mominator]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:07pm

Ouch!

[obsessedjb]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:07pm

not to be annoying but do you mind editing that?

[billynj]

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

yes i fixed it as soon as i saw it

[ljay889]

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

You're not being annoying by asking that. Isn't it illegal to copy and paste full reviews?

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:13pm

Yes.

[harvester7]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:24pm

Brantley is up:

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/theater/reviews/11merm.html

Ouch.

[neddyfrank2]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:25pm

I don't see a review...

[harvester7]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:28pm

Check again. It worked for me.

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:28pm

Double Ouch...he may have just murdered that show. That review was downright scathing. Now i've got to see this befofe it washes up quicker than anybody thought.

[adamgreer]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:30pm

Yikes.

That's not his usual prose...that's how you know he really disliked it. He's usually much more mellifluous. This review is far more pedestrian than he normally is.

[finebydesign]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:30pm

sorry you guys nothing can top (as mentioned earlier):

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


LOL display queen? i didn't even know that was a scene.

[ljay889]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:30pm

Yikes!

*edit* FineByDesign. I loved your brilliant pictures from yesterday. Just for fun can you post "the set" in here. lol. Updated On: 1/10/08 at 11:30 PM

[uncageg]

Posted: 1/10/08 at 11:31pm

where is the review? I went to theater and it wasn't there.