The image seen on the cover of the program of “Disney’s The Little Mermaid.”
On the cover of the program for “Disney’s The Little Mermaid,” which is currently being presented — in a lavish and very satisfying production — at The Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, the title character is shown sitting on a rock, at sundown, gazing into the distance as waves gently roll around her. The image couldn’t be more serene.
But in this 2007 musical (adapted from the 1989 animated film, which was inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen story), The Little Mermaid, whose name is Ariel, is having a tumultuous adolescence.
Her mother died years ago, and while her father Triton (king of the sea) dotes on her, he is also overprotective. Her six sisters are jealous of her. Her best friend, a fish named Flounder, is not-so-secretly in love with her. Her evil aunt Ursula is plotting to steal her soul. And she has a crush on a prince named Eric, though there is a pretty big impediment to them ever getting together: They are not members of the same … species.
You very likely will probably know all of this already, from the movie. Or most of it, at least; some significant changes have been made, including the addition of a number of songs to join some of the most beloved Disney songs ever (“Kiss the Girl,” “Part of Your World,” “Under the Sea”). Composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman wrote the songs for the film; Ashman died in 1991, so Menken teamed with lyricist Glenn Slater to write the additional songs for the musical.
EVAN ZIMMERMAN FOR MURPHYMADE
Hillary Fisher as Ariel in “Disney’s The Little Mermaid.”
But getting back to Ariel … she is a complicated character, and demands an actress who not only sings well, but can convey everything about her: her angst, her longing, her sense of mischief, her inner strength, even her occasional awkwardness. And this production, featuring direction and choreography by Joann M. Hunter, offers an ideal Ariel in Hillary Fisher, who not only sings with impressive power but convincingly shows all of the character’s different sides, throughout the story.
She also — like other actors in this musical — can sing well when pretending to swim or fly. That is essential, since swimming or flying on wires (choreographed by Paul Rubin) figures in a lot of the action, and it’s kind of cool that these two modes of moving mirror each other, echoing the similar yearnings of the two lovers. Just like Ariel fantasizes about being able to live above ground, the human Eric (played by Mark Doyle) idealizes the life of the sea, professing, before he meets Ariel, that he wants to find a “a girl who’s as carefree and alive as the sea itself.”
The 1989 film was 83 minutes long. (I haven’t seen the 2023 live-action remake so will leave that out of this discussion.) The musical runs for about two hours (not counting its intermission), so that’s a significant increase, opening the way for not just the added songs, but for more characters, and more backstory. We learn that Triton (Graham Rowat) and Ursula (Haven Burton) are brother and sister, and that Ursula murdered their sisters. Scuttle (Jared Goldsmith), Ariel’s seagull friend, gets a song of his own, and it’s a winner: “Positoovity,” a catchy, cheerful anthem in which he encourages Ariel to stay positive.
EVAN ZIMMERMAN FOR MURPHYMADE
Jared Goldsmith as Scuttle, with Hillary Fisher as Ariel and Aubrey Matalon as Flounder, in “Disney’s The Little Mermaid.”
“Then there’s you, just sitting there/Smack flat down upon your derriere/If that’s the way you want to be/Well, you might as well be shrubbery,” he sings.
The extra time also allows book writer Doug Wright to add a lot of fish puns. “That answer’s as canned as tuna and twice as oily,” says one of Ariel’s sisters when Triton lies, telling them that he loves all his daughters equally.
Hillary Fisher is one of many standouts in the cast. Doyle makes for a graceful and sincere Eric, Rowat projects regal authority as Triton, and Burton goes appropriately over-the-top in the demented-menace department, while still strutting like a diva, as Ursula. Sean Patrick Doyle and Nick Cortazzo are in constant, almost hypnotic, slithering motion as Ursula’s two assistants, the electric eels Flotsam and Jetsam, and the scene in which they grab at Ariel’s feet as she tries to swim away makes for one of the musical’s most striking visuals.
Goldsmith does a good job at both belting out “Positoovity” and smoothly delivering all the strange words that Scuttle utters. Constantly mangling the English language, he turns “paraphernalia” into “paraphenicular,” “ridiculously” into “ridonkulously,” “pristine” into “Sistine,” and so on.
EVAN ZIMMERMAN FOR MURPHYMADE
Kyle Taylor Parker as Sebastian in “Disney’s The Little Mermaid.”
Kyle Taylor Parker, as Ariel’s nervous but beneficent, Jamaican-accented guardian, Sebastian the Crab, gets to sing two of the musical’s show-stoppers (“Kiss the Girl,” “Under the Sea”), and David Baida adds a burst of comic energy as Chef Louis, who boisterously prepares a royal banquet for Eric and his guests (though the sequence in which Sebastian finds himself about to be boiled as part of the meal, and fights to escape from Louis and his assistants, gets a bit slapstick-y, and runs on too long).
Flounder (Aubrey Matalon) doesn’t have a lot to do except moon over Ariel, so it was a nice to have this character join Ariel’s sisters in the charming girl-group pastiche “She’s in Love,” which they sing about Ariel (“She’s moody as a snapper/Oblivious as rocks/You swim right up and tap her/She lays there like a lox”). Christopher Gurr effectively balances old-school stuffiness and benign warmth as Eric’s well-intentioned guardian, Grimsby.
The scenic design, by Kenneth Foy, and costume design, by Amy Clark and Mark Koss, evokes the rainbow of colors you can find “under the sea.” The special effects — all that swimming and flying, but also hand-held fish puppets, light-up costumes for Flotsam and Jetsam, and more — were truly special.
“The Little Mermaid” was a movie I was happy to watch with my daughter, when she was growing up, over and over. (And we did watch it, over and over.) I’m glad to see it has lost none of its charm in its transition to the stage.
By all means, if you have young children, take them. But even if you don’t, I can wholeheartedly recommend this production to adults of all ages, as well.
The Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn will present “Disney’s The Little Mermaid” through June 29. Visit papermill.org.
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