Let's (Not) See The Little Mermaid!

The Little Mermaid closes on Broadway this Sunday. And yes, I admit, I wanted to see it. It's a nice story, I absolutely love the music, and Ariel's a honey. But even before the dark days of unemployment, this show scored very low on my theatrical priorities, because it's supposed to be sucktastic. But I still wanted to see it, you know?

Then just the other day my friend and fellow Hogwarts alumn Jeff asked if I wanted to go to the box office early one morning and stand in line for Standing Room Only tickets. Naturally, I said yes.

But... I didn't go. FAIL. I was too tired yesterday and overslept my 6 a.m. wake-up call (and, perhaps not coincidentally, had a very strange dream involving Mary Poppins), so screw it, no SRO tickets for me.

As a punishment, I scoured YouTube looking for clips of what I'd be missing.

Turns out, I wouldn't be missing much.

"Under the Sea"


"Poor Unfortunate Souls"


This is such unimaginative staging! And the costumes are like a joke - they're awful. Sebastian and Ursula are great characters (I sort of dream about one day playing Ursula), but you suckify them by making them look like... cheap imitations. Hell, even Shrek put a lot of creativity and fun in their costuming.

Jeff's texts as he watched the show helped confirm my suspicions.
- Holy crap, this is a trainwreck!
- [Ariel's] too skinny. I could see her ribs from the back of the house. She needs to eat some fishsticks.

I don't think it holds a candle to Disney's Hollywood Studio's The Voyage of the Little Mermaid, as you can see here (pardon the poor quality):



Still, though, I should've gotten my lazy ass out of bed and gone to the box office. I might try on Saturday or Sunday, but I fear the weekends might be more crowded and harder to get ahold of SRO tickets.

So there's still the slimmest of slim chances that I'll get to go and be... (sung) part of that world.