What's the Price to Be Part of Your World?

Welcome to this week’s edition of Summit Stages News! I’m Rebecca Burnham and this is where you get weekly updates about musical theatre that promotes wholeness and belonging; learn about visionary creators, producers and others; and discover some mighty stories that need to be turned into musicals.

I’m on a collaborative mission to give cynics reason to become connectors, drifters hope to become builders, and enemies understanding to become friends, all through musical theatre. It’s a task that’s way bigger than I am and this newsletter is my effort to gather with people of vision, heart, and skills so we can do that work together.

This fall, I’m in the thick of stage-managing a local production of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. The stage show, first produced in 2007, is based on the 1989 animated film.

Adapting a mega-hit film to the stage (and vice versa) is financially attractive, because the story already has a committed fan base. It’s also risky, because those committed fans have expectations based on the original version, which may not be translatable to the new medium. In the case of The Little Mermaid, the staged version did not live up to the pattern set by The Lion King (1997) and Beauty and the Beast (1994), which have become Broadway’s third and eleventh longest running shows, respectively. By contrast, Mermaid’s original Broadway run shut down after only 685 performances when it was losing money. The book was then reworked in 2012, and the newer version is now the basis for all MTI-licensed productions.

I suspect the underperformance on Broadway has something to do with the difficulties of depicting the undersea portions of the story convincingly, as well as the necessity of removing the epic battle sequence between Ursula and Eric that created the climax of the film version, but would be cost-prohibitive to depict convincingly onstage. If you go to the stage show expecting to see a gargantuan Ursula whipping up whirlpools until she’s skewered by the broken mast of a wrecked ship, you’ll be disappointed.

But if you go looking for a universal story that maybe resonates with issues in your own life, you might be pleasantly surprised. The stage version prioritizes a relevant story over special effects, with a theme that seems especially timely: love conquers division.

That theme is introduced in the opening number, where Ariel sings about her sense of belonging in “The World Above” (where she’s not allowed to be) while sailors sing about their deep fear of King Triton and his court in “Fathom’s Below.” There’s also some dialogue between Erik and Grimsby that indicates the young prince feels divided between the demands of his royalty and his longing for the waves and the open air.

We see more division when we segue into King Triton’s court, where everyone is celebrating his overthrow and banishment of his older sister, the sea-witch Ursula. But Ariel doesn’t show up to perform as expected, and the reactions of her six sisters show that the loss of their mother has divided this family into a multitude of rivalries.

King Triton fears being divided from his youngest daughter, the one whose voice sounds like her dead mother’s. So he leans into control, forbidding her to ever go to the surface again. She defies him and winds up both saving Eric from drowning and falling in love with him. Triton tries to pull her back by destroying her collection of things from the World Above. And she winds up in the grasp of Ursula, who insinuates accusations against her father.

It’s significant that, like Ariel, Ursula was the youngest of seven daughters. Only, in her case, she was the least favourite, the one who was not “Daddy’s Little Angel” so she’d systematically murdered every one of her sisters and inherited her father Poseidon’s throne when he died. She’d enjoyed a reign of terror until her baby brother grew up and overthrew her. Now she begins her revenge by convincing Ariel that she has no choice but division. Either she has to be divided forever from the man she loves or from her family and her voice. Ariel gives up her voice and family for just the chance of winning her man. She also surrenders her future to Ursula, should she fail. And she begins Act II in the world above, a world that is divided against the one she came from.

It’s Sebastian who first starts the work of unwinding division. This happens in Act II Scene 6, after his close encounter with Chef Louis, when all his instincts for self-preservation urge him to pull the plug on Ariel’s adventure. “I should march you right back home to your father –” he tells her, and then considers the consequence for her, “so you can be miserable the rest of your life.” Instead, he commits to helping her win the prince. Skuttle works with him to bring that to pass.

In the stage version of this story, Ursula then fails to emotionally divide Eric and Ariel. The voiceless girl has won his heart and he realizes it at a singing contest where his hand is the grand prize. This is just before Ursula approaches, heralding herself with Ariel’s voice. Eric orders that the singer be told the contest is over.

But the realization has taken too long. The three-day window for Ariel to win his kiss has just ended with sunset. So Ursula drags Ariel back to her lair, where King Triton arrives to rescue her, only to discover that he cannot dissolve the magical contract that his daughter signed. The only thing he can do is take her place; which he does. Ursula exults “And now darkness shall reign forever over ocean, sea and shoal.”

Ariel’s crucial moment is now. She’s been forgotten for a moment and snatches up the shell that is the locus of Ursula’s power and life force, as well as the receptacle for Ariel’s voice. She recovers her power of speech and threatens to break the shell. Ursula makes another effort to divide her against her father, pointing out that he lied about the “hideous” world above, which Ariel admits is “beautiful beyond compare.” But King Triton has made his love for her amply clear, and Ursula lets slip that it was she, not the humans, who killed Ariel’s mother. Ariel destroys the shell, and Ursula vaporizes.

I wish the bit about Ariel’s mother wasn’t in there. I think it weakens the scene and makes it less clear that Ariel’s motive is love for her father and the undersea world, not revenge. Besides, we’ve already seen that the sailors in the world above were quite capable of killing any denizen of the deep. I think it would be more powerful to allow King Triton to recognize that the division he participated in created enmity and victims on both sides.

In any case, when Triton then turns Ariel human and gives her his blessing to marry Eric, he has forgiven the human world and Ariel is able to join it without being lost to her family and friends. As she and Eric sail away on their honeymoon, the whole company, both of land and sea, sing, “And now at last, love has surpassed each tribulation. Mermaid and man finally can join and be one!”

This isn’t a story about a woman finding a happy ending by sacrificing her voice, her world, and her family to get a man. It’s a story about fear and division giving scope to malicious powers that are bent on destroying us. And it’s about the choice to love in the face of fear and division leading us forward to harmony and wholeness.

That’s a story that the world we’re in right now needs to connect with. And that gives extra meaning to the hours I’m currently spending on the production.