Music: Alan Menken & Howard Ashman
Lyrics: Glenn Slater
Book: Doug Wright
Synopsis: Loosely based upon the story by Hans Christian Andersen. Ariel, youngest daughter of King Triton, is dissatisfied with life in the sea. She longs to be with the humans above the surface, and is often caught in arguments with her father over those 'barbaric fish-eaters'. She goes to meet Ursula, the Sea Witch, to strike a deal, but Ursula has bigger plans for this mermaid and her father.
NEW YORK TIMES:
"But in a perverse process of devolution “The Little Mermaid” arrives on Broadway stripped of the movie’s generation-crossing appeal. Coherence of plot, endearing quirks of character, even the melodious wit of the original score (supplemented by new, substandard songs by Mr. Menken and the lyricist Glenn Slater) have been swallowed by an unfocused spectacle, more parade than narrative, that achieves the dubious miracle of translating an animated cartoon into something that feels like less than two dimensions"
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS:
"Kids, especially girls and young women who grew up adoring the movie, will be enchanted by all the bright colors and nonstop motion. But others, including musical-theater lovers, won't find much satisfaction here." & "The production is busy, not exciting; mechanical, not magical."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK POST:
"Oddly enough, it's George Tsypin's settings and Tatiana Noginova's costumes - with their breathtaking vulgarity and equally breathtaking confidence - that give this "Little Mermaid" a certain flap to its flippers in a sea of almost calculated mediocrity." & "Underneath all this baroque ornamentation was a tiny, tiny little musical struggling for its life."
Read the whole review HERE.
USA TODAY:
"The new Mermaid is ultimately less than the sum of its impressive parts, offering neither the richly imaginative spectacle of The Lion King nor the old-fashioned vitality and charm of Mary Poppins." & "Wright, Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater ... have developed the tale of a young mermaid's longing to live among humans into an endearing, if rather conventional, love story."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEWSDAY:
"It is even harder to fall in love with the show. In fact, the most amazing part of Disney's latest musical is its amazing shortage of originality - not to mention magic or cross-generational wit." & "Doggedly conventional, well-performed, middling bore of a show." & "Deep-sea living is represented by what looks like shredded plastic shower curtains. The show has a seashell-soap-dish aesthetic, sprinkled with pearlized fixtures from a kitsch '50s bathroom."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK SUN:
"Disney has turned "Mermaid" into the latest of its high-gloss screen-to-stage projects — and the result is almost exactly half as clever and touching and tuneful as the film."
Read the whole review HERE.
VARIETY:
"This is a show of chiefly juvenile distractions. Stronger on color than design cohesion, its gaudy kitsch has neither the dazzling stagecraft of "Lion King" nor the impressive scale and storybook quaintness of "Mary Poppins." & "The overall effect is that of a department store holiday window conjured by some display queen with artistic pretensions and a plastic fetish -- rarely of a mysterious world fathoms below."
