why did everyone not like little mermaid on broadway

Well for starters the set looks like a giant ripped up blue shower curtain with a couple of giant corkscrew bottle openers thrown in. Could have been a visual feast... it wasn't.

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You're allowed to like both -- its not an either or thing.

I hated every moment of it. My son hated most of it. My daughter liked it.

I hated the costuming, I hated the sets -- I felt like they just kept adding and adding and adding every little thing a 5 year old suggested.

I wish I could elaborate more, but my self defense mechanism keeps me from remembering.

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"It had nothing to do with the casts. Disney simply felt the market could not sustain two shows based off their princess franchise."

That's called spin, but is far from the real reason. If I recall correctly, they were going to put it in the Richard Rodgers, but determined the sets were too big, so it went to the Lunt instead.

It was an ugly and busy mess of a show. I kept wishing someone would light those giant bongs so at least the audience could laugh at the campiness of it all.

I love Menken, but the new songs were weak and forgettable. And the end of Act I was oddly anti-climactic.

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I found it incredibly appropriate that the entire set was plastic... LOL

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One of the ugliest shows I've seen in recent memory.

The sets were ugly - what was with those monolithic bong towers?
The costumes were ugly - Flounder in a t-shirt and shorts??

And to top it all off, Francesca Zambello's direction was awful.

I thought the added Menken/Slater songs were either hit or miss.

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CurtainPullDowner I agree with what you said about Schumacher. I heard that he was the one who was calling the shots for the show for pretty much the entire length of its Broadway preview period.

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Updated On: 8/10/11 at 11:31 AM

Four is plenty, methinks.

But what makes this thread practically glisten with irony is that if you look back at the LM threads around when it opened, people were tripping over themselves to say how great it was and how wonderful it looked.

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There are few times that I'll like a show if I find the cast album to be unsatisfactory, and this show lived up to that expectation. The classics were performed well, but the new material was pretty boring and two dimensional, the sets were cheap and unattractive, and the costuming felt uninspired. It definitely wouldn't be an easy show to direct, meaning Francesca Zambello shouldn't have been leading this trainwreck.

thats very interesting to hear about the director,i didnt know that. but okay..what exactly was everyone expecting from this show? i think its very unfair to expect them to b on wires pretending they r swimming for 2 hours.there is no way they cud do that. when ppl saw beauty and the beast did they really expect the objects to b 8 inches off the ground? i think TLM had flaws to it,but i think ppl were way to harsh on it. ill admit i had no idea what the corkscrew things were supposed to b. but i believe how they did the ocean with the glistening moving plastic was a clever way to do the show without being actually underwater. the thing with all disney theatrical shows like BATB Lionking etc... are that they suggest these different worlds and costumes not actually do it. for example : grown actors playing candlesticks. they didnt have an actual candlestick and have an actor b a voice over..why?that wud b stupid. did u actually see simba in a full grown lion suit? no it was SUGGESTED which is exactly what TLM did. if u look closely alot of the puppetry in lion king is alot like the puppetry used for under the sea in the little mermaid. just saying

It's called illusion & Disney magic. Which The Little Mermaid had none of.

While I know many people here don't appreciate the Disney musical, you cannot deny that compared to Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast was truly a grand and magical show.

In my opinion, Beauty and the Beast is a truly grand and magical show no matter what it is being compared to!

The Little Mermaid was just a mess. I think a difference might be that Disney didn't know if Beauty and the Beast and Lion King were going to work onstage, and so a lot of effort was put into the productions. In the case of Little Mermaid, I think the audience was already expected to come see the show, because little girls like Ariel, and I don't feel enough effort was put into it. Either that or Disney Theatrical executives really like giant plastic bongs and freak-of-nature costuming. A couple of the new songs were pretty great, but outlandishly garish costumes and a glittery abstract set did the show in. I will say that "Kiss the Girl" was magnificently performed and staged, and the rest of the show was just not able to sustain that level.

Francesca Zambello's theatrical track record is spotty: Little Mermaid, Little House on the Prairie, co-directing the upcoming Rebecca, but she has received some acclaim in the opera world. In light of some of the comments made here, I wonder what directorial choices she made and what was forced on her by Thomas Schumaker to see where the breakdown in creativity occurred.

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