Review: Pieni merenneito
The Little Mermaid splashes into the hearts of viewers in the enchantingly fine musical
The Mermaid
Phew, I almost missed this Disney musical! I hadn’t checked the start time of the performance, and I automatically assumed that the performance would start at seven, as theatre performances usually start.
First, I went out to eat with my friend Niina, who lives in Hanko, and we arrived at the Helsinki City Theatre at half past seven. The janitor standing on the coat racks said that we should hurry because the performance starts NOW! I decided to change into my party shoes in the auditorium, and we just rushed up the stairs to the foyer of the theater.
Fortunately, the door to the hall of the big stage was still open, and there were other people at the door. In a panic, I looked for the tickets in my smartphone’s email, and Niina and I were able to jump to the third row of the stalls.
The premiere was sold out, but there were actually surprisingly few children in the hall. Most of the people in the hall seemed to be nostalgia-hungry thirty-somethings like us.
I had been waiting for The Little Mermaid ever since I heard in the winter that the Helsinki City Theatre had included it in its repertoire. Disney’s The Little Mermaid was one of my favorite childhood animations, which I watched over and over again. I had just turned nine when the animation premiered in Finland.
The last time I saw the animation was about 10 years ago at a movie night at the gay nightclub DTM in Iso-Roba. The movie event was hosted by Cristal Snow and another host, and they were dressed as the sea witch Ursula and Sebastian the crab.
The premise of the fairy tale is that the sea king Triton has seven beautiful and musically talented daughters, the sweetest of whom is the youngest, Ariel. Her father has forbidden Ariel to go to sea level because people could see her and imprison her.
However, Ariel defies her father and collects exciting objects dropped into the sea by humans. One day, Ariel saves a shipwrecked prince from drowning and falls in love with a handsome young man. Ariel goes to the sea witch Ursula so that she can get legs instead of a tail and enter the human world. As payment, Ursula demands Ariel’s voice and gives her three days to get a kiss from the prince.
The prince’s guardian Yrjö, on the other hand, pressures Erik to find a spouse before Erik turns 18. The prince just can’t get the beautiful girl who saved his life.
The Little Mermaid is the Helsinki City Theatre’s biggest investment of all time, and it shows! The performance is visually stunning, perhaps the most spectacular theatre performance ever made in Finland.
The musical is also funny, touching and romantic, and the show is crowned by soap bubble showers floating into the auditorium at the end. The audience gave a standing ovation at the premiere.
The sets and costumes, rich in detail, change quickly, and we get to see a sailing ship, a wreck, an undersea world and the royal palace. In the sea sections, the actors move as if they were constantly lightly moved by the flow of water, and the tails of the mermaids are nicely executed.
Ariel and Prince Erik also really swim in the air. I got cold shivers when Ariel first rose to swim to the heights and sang at the same time, because the scene was so great. It reminded me of the fifteen-minute A Little Mermaid show I saw at Tokyo’s DisneySea amusement park last year, where the Japanese Ariel also swam and sang in the air, although of course the musical at the Helsinki City Theatre is on a larger scale.
Ursula the octopus moves on wheels and her tentacles are moved by assistants. Moving seafood is projected onto the gauze fabrics. During the show, a total of almost 80 people work on stage and behind the scenes, and of course, a much larger group has been involved in the performance. However, the expensive production is reflected in the ticket prices, and the basic ticket for the stalls is a salty 88 euros.
Musicals are also almost always associated with a certain lightness, and you shouldn’t expect a particularly radical plot or a fresh and profound message from The Little Mermaid either.
Samuel Harjanne, 31, who directed the hit musical Kinky Boots for the Helsinki City Theatre last year, has once again received a lot of expectations, and he also lives up to expectations. Sonja Pajunoja, on the other hand, is suitable as the lively and bright Ariel. Martti Manninen pulls well into the role of a prince who loves sailing. However, the performance is almost stolen by Sanna Saarijärvi in the role of the mighty sea witch Ursula.
The endearing and wonderfully natural actor is schoolboy Alek Pérez Lahtinen, who premiered in the role of Ariel’s friend, Splash the Fish. In the auditorium, three other Pärsky child actors sat in the same row as us. The crab, Sebastian, who works as a singing teacher for mermaids and protector of Ariel, is inventively created as a doll moved by Tero Koponen. The role of Höpsö’s Skuutti seagull is delighted by Tuukka Leppänen. The French chef at the Royal Palace is a stereotypical but still delicious character (Tuomas Uusitalo). It has been a great idea to put an army of clones of French chefs in the kitchen to hustle and bustle.
Numerous other actors will also be seen on stage, including the muscular Mikko Vihma as the stern but fair sea ruler Triton. Her abs must have been brought out better with makeup to make her resemble the Triton in the animation!
Helsinki City Theatre has profiled itself as a producer of familiar musicals that have been successful abroad. This is also an original production by Disney Theatrical Production, and the musical premiered on January 10, 2008 on Broadway in New York. The Little Mermaid animation premiered in 1989, and it is based on a 1837 fairy tale by Danish director Hans Christian Andersen. Disney has changed the fairy tale to make it happier, such as removing Ariel’s suicide from the ending and giving her her her prince.
Andersen wrote the fairy tale as a declaration of love to his close friend Edvard Collins when Collins became engaged to his female friend. Andersen identified with a mermaid who cannot have a prince because they belong to different worlds. Disney’s version is not about sexual orientation or desperate love, but more broadly about the fulfillment of dreams, young love and prejudice against difference.
Andersen’s homosexuality and its outlook in the fairy tale were discussed more openly in the Finnish National Opera’s ballet The Little Mermaid, which I saw in November 2015.
In the case of Ariel, one can wonder if the character is a girl who rejects everything because of a man she doesn’t know, and whose life fulfills her life by getting married as a teenager. Or is Ariel a feminist figure who defies public opinion and the expectations of her loved ones in order to live a life that looks like herself? I experienced Ariel and Erik as empowering characters, because they both rebelled to be able to fulfill their dreams.
In the castle’s kitchen, we see another grotesque scene in which Sebastian the crab tries to escape from under the knife of a French chef. It felt like the performance was trying to deal with the contradiction that the main role in the play is played by wonderful seafood, which people eat.
The musical also delights with classic songs familiar from animation, which are enlivened by new Finnish translations. Alan Menken, who composed music for the animation, has composed more than 10 new songs for the musical. The songs are not hits as good as the song Under the Sea, but they are quite nice to hear.