Little Mermaid – York Theatre Royal and Touring

Picture: Robert Day

Little Mermaid was reviewed at York Theatre Royal and continues touring.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Triple threat actors who can sing, dance and act have long been a cliché of musical theatre. In these pages, we have seen the development of that trope from triple to quadruple as many companies now demand that performers play a musical instrument as well.

Metta Theatre, with its emphasis on integrating the arts, now adds acrobatics to the list, drawing gasps of astonishment from the audience at the York Theatre Royal.

How does this this look in practice? Well, how about playing the violin hanging upside down from a trapeze? Or, expecting the hero Prince to dive 25 feet into the arms of two (admittedly rather burly) sea nymphs? Or spinning around the stage in a cyr wheel while developing the character of the jilted Seawitch?

Director Poppy Burton-Morgan certainly likes to take risks. It is not just the acrobatics (which falter in places, though mistakes are well recovered), the costuming tends to the androgynous and the lighting is rather gloomy. Set and lighting designer William Reynolds would probably respond that the audience needs to appreciate that they are frequently under the sea.

The Little Mermaid story itself is well served by various interpretations, not all of which have adhered to Hans Christian Andersen’s sickly original (of course, Disney found their own way to sentimentality). Metta Theatre’s version satisfies the taste for a feminist solution, but the theme is basically the same: love conquers all and a wedding comes at the end of the story.

Rosie Rowlands’ Little and Matt Knight’s Prince make an appealing couple, but the pick of the singer/dancer/musicians/acrobats is Rosalind Ford as Careful and doubling as the Tailor. She sings well and switches effortlessly between nymph and  human (‘He’ll Only Love You If You’re Perfect’).

I took my grandchildren to the performance and they were on the edge of their seats for the full 70 minutes and were still talking about the show days later. There is no arguing with an audience reaction like that.

Mike Tilling