By Jon Manarang
Stepping (swimming?) into the space, you are thrust into a seaside tavern where wenches and sailors lure you to your seats. A rowdy troupe of bar musicians cheers and strums through a set of rousing shanties before laying down the house rules in a pastiche of the classic sea-faring tune “Drunken Sailor.”
Set designer Frank Oliva was tasked with transforming the malleable black box theater into an imaginative, undersea world. With distressed driftwood, ship masts and a figurehead of a mermaid, Oliva’s eye for detail is unparalleled with every bit of detritus feeling freshly washed ashore. Alongside Oliva’s set, the lighting of Joe Naftal works perfectly in tandem with a myriad of cues creating a variety of underwater and land environments, from “Scuttle’s Perch” to “The Crow’s Nest.”
As for the immersive aspect of the show, there are two kinds of options for tickets, the general admission where the audience is seated as actors dash in and out of various scenes and the premium seats that put you square in the middle of the action. In the premium seats audience members are advised to put their personal items beneath the seat as actors get up close and personal with the crowd.
The nautical framing of the show is immediately justified as we’re introduced to the ship of Prince Eric (Henry Thrasher) alongside his servant Grimsby (John Mazuelos) and the Pilot (Nelson Rodriguez) navigating the stormy seas as he regales the crew with a tale of King Triton’s temper controlling over the ocean’s tides in the shanty “Fathoms Below.” While the film cut the sequence down to a short introduction to our characters, composer Alan Menken teamed up with lyricist Glenn Slater to flesh the track into a greater backstory.
Diving into the ocean, we meet the steadfast patriarch King Triton (Frank Montoto) and his seven mermaid daughters, Arista (Isis Palma), Aquata (Brette Raia-Curah), Atina (Caila Katz), Andrina (Karina Fernandez), Allana (Katie Duerr) and Adella (Michelle Gordon) as they prepare for a royal concert lead by the concertmaster, a neurotic crab named Sebastian (Aaron Hagos). As his seventh and youngest daughter is nowhere to be found in the performance, the citizens of the deep are thrown into the frenzy as the audience rises to the surface where Ariel (Josslyn Shaw) is found pining for the objects of the human world as treasures with some, albeit misguided help from her friends the boisterous seagull Scuttle (Annette Rodriguez) and the guppy Flounder (Hallie Walker) in the song “Human Stuff.”
In adapting the show for the stage, book writer Doug Wright was given insight into John Musker and Ron Clements early script treatments for The Little Mermaid. Wright opted to use the stage musical as an opportunity to bring back some of these elements such as Ursula (Jonathan Chisolm) being King Triton’s sister that was banished to the far reaches of the ocean. Consulting with her crones, the electric eels Flotsam (Tico Chiriboga) and Jetsam (Luke Surretsky), the sea witch laments her desire for power and to escape her imprisonment in the campy cabaret track “I Want the Good Times Back” a la Kander and Ebb. While I would argue that Ursula in the original The Little Mermaid film was a far more morally gray character, the song “Good Times” gives the octopus queen an unmistakably evil edge as a power-hungry villainess.
As Ariel dives into her cavern of treasures from the human world, she begins to question why her strict father prevents her from interacting with the land. Written by original lyricist Howard Ashman, the master of the “I Want” song, Ariel’s pining for the world above the waves comes to a roar in “Part of Your World.” In delivering the show’s signature song, Josslyn Shaw’s brilliant soprano is a masterclass in musical theater performance. From the whisper-hush talk-singing, to the massive climax of the song where she proclaims that she’s ready to stand with a soaring belt, just nearly escaping the grotto. Josslyn Shaw’s delivery of the iconic track is a rare performance that compels you to the momentous emotions that the song demands, all with Shaw’s angelic Disney Princess tone. Even the reprise has all the gravitas that could draw one to tears with each word of Ashman’s delivered with gorgeous intensity.
The storm on the seas tosses Prince Eric’s ship with reckless abandon, as pantomimed by a performer with a scale model of a vessel circling the audience. Prince Eric is brought ashore by Ariel, where he becomes smitten by the sound of the mermaid’s siren song as her luscious singing voice helps revive him. Played by NYC-based actor Henry Thrasher, the performer brings a passionate approach to “Her Voice,” a ballad Thrasher has sung for years, yet still brings an inquisitively fiery desire as the show’s leading man.
While King Triton did not have any songs in the film, the Broadway production added “The World Above (Reprise).” Frank Montoto has been a featured player in ASC’s renditions of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Annie,” but here as Triton, Montoto gets to put on a heavier display of emotions, especially as it is established that the sea king’s disdain for humans originates from his wife’s passing at the hands of humans. Triton assigns Sebastian to dissuade Ariel from ever going near the land.
