Review: Pieni merenneito
The Little Mermaid’s visuals dazzle
The musical The Little Mermaid, which had its Finnish premiere at the Helsinki City Theatre on Thursday, is such a wonderful experience that words are almost not enough to describe it.
The story is about the mermaid Ariel, who wants to become a human and sells her vote to a merino witch in order to get legs in place of her tail. In front of the people, the mute Ariel falls in love with the handsome Prince Erik, and after overcoming the difficulties, they get each other and Ariel gets her voice back.
The performance is dazzlingly visual. Especially the underwater world is great. A large part of the seafarers are dolls that are designed and partly made in England. Ariel “swam” flying through the air, and the flying machinery is also from England.
Pirjo Liiri-Majava has designed the glorious, colourful costumes, Peter Ahlqvist has designed the magnificent set design bubbling with details, and Toni Haaranen has designed the impressive video projections. The sea people are constantly moving as if the water were swaying them, and the tails of the mermaids live a life of their own.
The breathtaking, eye-catchingly beautiful performance is also the most expensive production in the history of the Helsinki City Theatre.
The Little Mermaid touches on, for example, respect for nature, love and sibling jealousy, but above all, the theme is finding one’s own place in the world and being accepted as one is.
Already in the first song On the Earth it is clear that Ariel wants to be in the world of people,
He does not think he belongs to the underwater kingdom. Erik, too, would rather be an ordinary sailor than a prince who is supposed to rule the kingdom.
Young viewers will probably be attracted to a handsome prince and a beautiful mermaid who becomes a princess. Martti Manninen and Sonja Pajunoja skillfully sing and act their slightly one-dimensional roles. They are also a couple in real life.
The older viewer, on the other hand, identifies more with his Ursula merino, who is certainly cruel, but her words also convey life experience. Ursula is an octopus, and the viewer does not want to take their eyes off her ever-slithering tentacles. Sanna Saarijärvi tears succulently in the role of her life.
Director Samuel Harjanne has succeeded in both the storytelling and the direction of the characters, as the actors shine in their roles.
Admittedly, it seems illogical that Ariel is unable to talk to the prince because she has no voice, but in the solitude of her room, she still bursts into singing about her feelings a couple of times. In this case, it is necessary to understand a fact that is part of the genre of musicals: some songs describe a person’s thoughts, they sound as if in their head. The magic of a musical is that the viewer can hear them.
The story, based on the Disney animated film, has been expanded into a musical by adding songs, among other things.
The Ariel sisters’ shoop-shoop song Lääpällä and the Oscar-winning Under the Sea, which is also known from the film, and which has been named Stay in the Depths in the new Finnish translation of the musical, are shows at their best.
The kitchen scene, on the other hand, is prolonged, detached and completely different from the rest of the story. In the scene, chef Louis (the excellent Tuomas Uusitalo) sings about delicious fish dishes and tries to get Ariel’s friend, Sebastian the crab (excellent Tero Koponen), into the pot and into the pot. Of course, it brings humor to the romantic story when the crab scurries away from the obsessive chef.
A total of 42,000 tickets have already been sold and reserved for The Little Mermaid, so you should hurry if you want to be part of one of the most talked-about performances of this year.