Under the sea, it is certainly wetter. Act One’s sin-soaked panto The Small Mermaid plunges us into the deep end of a very wet (fever) dream; think Rocky Horror meets Sea World meets Am-Dram.
Directed by Millie Quarm (Twelfth Night), the plot is anchored in the upcoming erections, I mean elections, of the human world – of which Just Stop Oil leads the polls – much to the vexation of underwater Motherlord and oil magnate Ursula. She commissions her minion Liz Truce to spy on the affairs of JSO head honcho Eric, a climate change firebrand, doted on by the desperately horny Aria. Following Aria’s Faustian bargain with Ursula to grow legs and join Eric on land, a circus of concupiscent pandemonium ensues, involving endless ‘daddy’/’diddy’ puns, conspicuously sticky floors and a particularly lustful eel. Ultimately Ursula’s fracking empire is toppled by Triton’s threats to unveil her tax evasion schemes unless she frees Aria from her tentacles, much to the jubilation of Just Stop Oil. And there were only a few Les Mis songs.
Curtains open on the acapella chorus of se(a)men, who interchangeably embody JSO protestors as well as daughters of Triton. After only a handful of scenes, Aria (Lotty Wharton) melts into a puddle of horniness when she meets Eric, professing that she wants to dip her toes into the human world and bring him back to her (ocean) bed. (Even the original had always had something weird about feet, and this adaptation runs (!) with it). Although she is repeatedly warned of the danger of oil spills and overfishing at the ocean’s surface, she simply can’t help herself but to go to the top (and get on top), selling her soul to the campaign in the pursuit of a man (sigh). Patriarchy persists beyond the shores, it seems.
Flounder is Fondler (Ben Edwards), a watery wanker who at one point unceremoniously ‘ejaculates’ whipped cream over Triton (Anwen Crawford) (and the front row of the captive audience, much to their horror) in an inappropriately hilarious scene of classic slapstick slosh. Ozempiced oceanic overlord and octopoid Ursula (Josh Salisbury) oozes not just ink but a salaciously slimy countenance. Whilst she confesses her BBL might have deflated, the melodramatic ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ ensnares the audience in her tendriled web of deception, with her savagely comic delivery as razor-sharp as her arched eyebrows.
The production’s orgasmic apotheosis climaxes at the delightfully raucous counterplay between Panto Dame Sebastina (Ben Lewis) and the audience, in the world’s most drawn-out succession of call and response. ‘Oh Yes It Did’ go on for ages. Still, Sebastina is possibly the only slightly normal character within this bonkers production – that is, until ‘Kiss The Girl’ in which ‘kiss’ is interchanged for increasingly literal verbs that I probably should not write in this review. And of course, no one could forget the pair of expertly useless starfish (because they never left the stage) who glisten under the stage lights with the sparkle of homoerotic tension.
The Small Mermaid drips with libido with every line but never drowns in its debauchery. It stirs the warm waters of the well-loved dramatic form, making new waves and leaving a high watermark for the relentlessly randy panto romp.
Words by Julia Bottoms
Photos courtesy of Millie Quarm