There you go. This is what we want from Theatre Under the Stars: an embraceable musical gorgeously produced.
Unlike Sister Act, the other offering from TUTS this summer, The Little Mermaid has a score full of lyrically and rhythmically engaging songs, and a big-hearted and solidly constructed book.
The story’s premise is simple. Ariel, the little mermaid, has never felt she belonged in the underwater realm of her father, King Triton. Especially after rescuing the handsome Prince Eric from drowning, Ariel longs to visit the land of people, so she pawns her beautiful singing voice to her evil — and magical — aunt, Ursula, for a chance to have legs for three days, on the understanding that, if Eric doesn’t kiss her within that time, she will lose her voice and be imprisoned forever. High-stakes romance!
Where to start? It feels like Madison Simms (Ariel) and Pier Francesco Marchi (Eric) could well become stars in the next generation of musical theatre performers in Vancouver and beyond. I’m not familiar with Simms’s work (she’s been performing on cruise lines, among other activities), but Marchi impressed me mightily as Marc Cohen in Metro Theatre’s production of Rent last fall. Pure of voice and confident in their delivery, both Simms and Marchi are also charming actors who offer heartfelt characterizations. There’s something particularly impressive about the sustained innocence of Marchi’s Eric.
The whole cast is solid. Cecilly Day’s portrait of Ursula is appropriately huge. Day’s voice is so capacious it’s like you could walk right inside it and bang around in there, and, as an actor, she is clearly relishing Ursula’s wickedness. I loved the sweet bashfulness of Angus Silva’s Flounder, the little fish who’s in love with Ariel but generously stands aside when he realizes Eric has won her heart. And Janelle Reid won my heart as Sebastian, the Caribbean crab who becomes Ariel’s sidekick. Sebastian gets the two best songs in the show, the Academy Award-winning “Under the Sea” and the Oscar-nominated “Kiss the Girl”. With the warmth of her voice and the focused tenderness and energy of her delivery, Reid aces both of them.
Ai y iyi! “Under the Sea”. Director Nicol Spinola’s staging of that number created one of those perfect TUTS moments that keeps me coming back for more. In the song, Eric and Ariel have arrived, by rowboat, in a small grotto. The moment is romantic, and time is running out on Ursula’s spell, but Ariel can’t speak and it was her voice Eric remembers falling in love with when she rescued him from drowning — he didn’t see her face and doesn’t fully recognize her in this “new woman” — so both are hesitant. Gently, lovingly, Sebastian sings “Kiss the Girl” and the ensemble swirls around the couple’s tiny craft: fantastic forms of fish, jellyfish, and other sea life — there’s a turtle! — willing them to submit to love. And everything, including the seaweed, is draped in tiny, sparkling lights. Give me strength! It’s good to know I don’t have to die to go to heaven.
Throughout the show, the design elements are a collective knockout. Donnie Tejani’s costumes, including his designs for the jellyfish, with pink streamers trailing from their wide-brimmed hats almost to the tops of their flowy, wide-legged trousers, deserve an award. The constantly shifting colour combinations in Jonathan Kim’s lighting design — and the originality of his palette — provoke pure pleasure. And a bunch of that colour action is happening on the arches that sit over the playing area like a double rainbow in Ryan Cormack’s set. Because it defines Malkin Bowl’s space, which can feel vacuous, that arch, which is also part of Cormack’s vision for Sister Act, is an excellent idea. Cormack’s whole set, including the shiny, giant, blue rock formations, is storybook dreamy.
Besides directing, Spinola has choreographed the whole thing. “Positoovity” features a large — and, in its joyful precision, satisfying — chorus of tapdancing seagulls. “Les Poissons” combines the high-camp high stepping of a chorus of chefs with the barely controlled chaos of the chefs’ pursuit of a terrified Sebastian.
Until this production, I had only known — and appreciated — Spinola’s work as a choreographer. There’s a good reason for that: this production of The Little Mermaid marks her official directorial debut. Shut the front door! She has pulled it all together.
I couldn’t have liked it more.
THE LITTLE MERMAID Music by Alan Menken. Lyrics by Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater. Book by Doug Wright. Based on the Hans Christian Andersen story and the Disney film. This Theatre Under the Stars production is running in rep in Malkin Bowl until August 20.
PHOTO CREDIT: Honestly, I was kind of pulling for the sweet, undersea pairing of Angus Silva’s Flounder and Madison Simms’s Ariel. (Costumes by Johnny Tejani. Photo by Emily Cooper.)
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