Picture: Ellie Kurttz Photography
The Singing Mermaid continues at the Little Angel Theatre, London until 24 April 2022.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
If you want charm, theatrical delight and entrancing work for young children, Little Angel Theatre is always the place to go.
The Singing Mermaid – exquisite puppets designed by Lyndie Wright who founded Little Angel Theatre with her late husband, John Wright – is set mostly in a circus.
Based on Julia Donaldson’s book, illustrated by Lydia Monks, the rhyming story gives us a mermaid who is captured by the self interested Circus Master (Gilbert Taylor) and made to perform in his circus.
The best sequence is the opening one in which we see the mermaid in her natural environment amongst her fellow sea creatures.
The three puppeteer/actors – Ruth Calkin and Heidi Goldsmith with Taylor at the performance I saw – bring the cockles and mussels, fish, cetaceans and so on to life beautifully. The salty, dancing crabs are an especial delight and the jellyfish rather fun.
After that we get a whole series of circus acts – nicely puppeted and thoughtfully directed before we finally see the poor mermaid, so miserable that she can’t sing properly for her circus audience.
And Barb Jungr’s attractive music turns it into musical theatre: songs with dialogue. Her melodies are spare, often based on simple triads and not many notes but every bar is appropriately evocative.
And all three performers sing well, especially when they’re in harmony, although the money song owes something to Les Mis’ ‘Master of the House’.
Most of the young children who saw it alongside me were fully engaged although there was a bit of restlessness towards the end. Arguably, with an hour’s run time, the piece is ten minutes too long.
Susan Elkin
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