Word: disney
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...complaints have become as predictable as the patter for the villain's henchmen in a Disney cartoon: Disney shows are too big, too commercial, too over-marketed - not real theater so much as bloated "theme park" extravaganzas that only children and undiscriminating tourists could love (though the criticism of Disney's last show, Mary Poppins, was somewhat different; the critics found it too heavy, not theme-parky enough.) Disney's latest offering - The Little Mermaid, based on Disney's 1989 animated hit, which opened at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre last week - has received the usual fusillade. "Washed...
...Little Mermaid is more than just a visual feast. In fact, I think it comes closer than any Disney show since The Lion King to combining story, song and inventive staging into something that lifts our spirits and renews our faith that theater for "children" can be enjoyed by everyone. Acclaimed opera director Francesca Zambello, doing her first Broadway show, can't match Julie Taymor's innovative staging in The Lion King (but then, who can - not even Taymor since then), but she has the same inventive, less-is-more, determinedly theatrical approach. Instead of wires and pulleys or complicated...
...Little Mermaid doesn't capture all the charms of the 1989 movie, which really launched Disney's latter-day renaissance in animation. The story about Ariel, a mermaid who longs to be human and trades in her voice for a chance at the prince of her dreams, is fleshed out with some uninspired back-story for the prince. The film's great, calypso-style "Under the Sea" number doesn't have quite the bounce it did on screen. And Ariel's Jiminy Cricket-like sidekick, the Jamaican-accented Sebastian the crab, isn't nearly as funny when robbed...
...story itself has more romantic resonance than some of the more self-important Disney tales. Hans Christian Andersen gets a lot of the credit for that, but book writer Doug Wright (Grey Gardens, I Am My Own Wife) at least managed not to screw it up. Composer Alan Menken (with Glenn Slater replacing the late Howard Ashman as lyricist) has added several catchy new songs to his already fine score; the Broadway-razzmatazz number in which the Ursula, the sea witch (a sharp Sherie Renee Scott), celebrates her evil ways, "I Want the Good Times Back," would have made...
...become critical dartboards? Or to point out that most of the children's theater I've seen in the past few years has had more theatrical verve and originality than most of the serious stuff I've had to sit through on Broadway? Or to wish, just once, that Disney might get a little credit for recruiting some of the most adventurous theater artists in the world to bring new ideas in staging and storytelling to a mass theater audience, kids and adults alike...