The Little Mermaid. Music by Alan Menken. Lyrics by Glenn Slater and Howard Ashman. Book by Doug Wright. Directed by David Atfield. Choreographer Michelle Heine. Musical director Nicholas Griffin. Conductor Ian McLean. Designer Cate Clelland. Free-Rain Theatre Company. The Canberra Theatre. April 8 to 10,12 to 17. freeraintheatre.com.
Free-Rain Theatre Company will be staging the Canberra premiere of the Broadway musical, The Little Mermaid, based on the 1989 Disney animated movie as well as the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, in April.
Cate Clelland, the set and costume designer says the instructions from the rights holders were as strict as they were opaque regarding how the show was to be presented.
"We were not allowed to do something completely different but we were not allowed to copy directly, either the movie or the Broadway show."
Director David Atfield, who's directed many plays but is helming his first musical, says originally he had hoped to place the show in a contemporary setting to give it an interesting wrinkle but this was vetoed.
"That's one of the things you can't change," he says.
Instead, the show has been set in a vague fairytale period sometime about the 17th century - once upon a time, so to speak. Ariel (played by Mikayla Williams) is the title character, the youngest daughter of King Triton (Steve Galinec) who is fascinated with the world above the sea. She falls in love with the human Prince Eric (Tim Dal Cortivo) and makes a deal with the sea witch Ursula (Louiza Blomfield) to trade her tail for legs so she can go to the surface and win his heart. But Ursula is an evil schemer, the bargain is not what it seems and Ariel needs the help of her friends Flounder the fish (Jake Willis), Scuttle the seagull (Tony Falla) and Sebastian the crab (Fraser Findlay) to make things right. It's played out to a score filled with songs including Poor Unfortunate Souls, Kiss the Girl, Part of Your World and the Oscar-winning Under the Sea - all from the movie - as well as new numbers written for the stage musical , some of which help to flesh out the character of Prince Eric.
Atfield says producer Anne Somes chose him on the basis of the visual sense revealed in his gay historical drama, Scandalous Boy, at the Street Theatre last year. He's finding the process of working on a musical much more collaborative than a play, working closely with choreographer Michelle Heine, musical director Nicholas Griffin, conductor Ian McLean and Clelland along with the rest of the production team.
But he's taking the musical every bit as seriously as he would any other work.
"I've approached it as a play rather than a show which was a different approach for some of the performers. I wanted it as a drama rather than a musical, the dialogue not something that's filler in between the songs."
Atfield says the story, characters and dialogue are strong enough to carry the audience along with a mix of comedy, drama and romance and he's worked hard at developing the various relationships among the characters.
Clelland says the production team's aim was to keep the iconic elements of the story intact and to maintain a stylised look and feeling to the piece.
"It's not real life, it's a fairytale," she says.
"A storybook feel is what we're after."
The sets, backdrops, costumes and props have been designed to this end and Clelland says one of the biggest challenges that had to be addressed was the fact that the show takes place in three distinct environments. Some of it is set under the sea, where the mermaids and other underwater creatures live; some of it takes place above the sea, aboard ship and on land; and some of it merges the two, when undersea characters interact with those who live above the water.
Clelland says given filling the stage with massive quantities of water was not an option, "we had to draw on everything ... lighting was really, really important. We used fabric in a couple of scenes, and when the characters are underwater there's a frame so you can tell they're underwater."
Character movement will be used to suggest the undersea location and the mermaids' tails will be long skirts that flow out at the bottom, "the suggestion of tails" as Clelland puts it, since the characters have to be able to move but Ariel gaining legs only when she is on land is a crucial story point.
Similarly, rather than have the actors playing sea creatures wear heavy "animal" costumes that impair movement, Clelland and her costume team have opted for human costumes that are suggestive of the characters - for example, Ursula's eel servants, Flotsam and Jetsam (David Santolin and Jamie Winbank) wear shiny tailcoats.
Atfield says he's enjoyed the experience of directing his first musical - what he might have given up in autonomy he's gained in having a group of collaborators to bounce ideas off and gain inspiration from as well as having had a new and challenging experience - and one he wouldn't mind doing again.
But for now, he's focused on helping to bring Ariel and her friends - and foes - to life on the Canberra stage for the first time, making them, so to speak, part of our world.
