The volunteer performers lighting up the James Armstrong Theatre stage give the pros a run for their money in Torrance Theatre Company’s dazzlingly designed, imaginatively directed, and delightfully performed big-stage, live-orchestra production of Disney The Little Mermaid.

 Like the animated feature that re-started it all for Disney back in 1989, Broadway’s Little Mermaid’s recounts the classic Hans Christian Andersen tale of a sea sprite with dreams of walking on dry land (both literally and down the aisle with her human prince).

Disney Studios added their trademark brand of supporting characters including Sebastian the Jamaican crab, Flounder the blue-finned fish, Scuttle the word-inventing seagull, and Ursula the evil sea witch and her aquatic henchmen Flotsam and Jetsam, ocean creatures which the stage adaptation tweaks ever so slightly.

And since a movie running well under ninety minutes does not a full-length Broadway musical make, book writer Doug Wright has expanded (and occasionally revised) Ron Clements and John Musker’s screenplay, with Alan Menken and Glenn Slater adding a bunch of new songs to join the Menken/Howard Ashman classics “Part Of Your World,” “Under The Sea,” and “Kiss The Girl.”

The result of all this masterful tinkering is a Broadway crowd-pleaser that may not follow the movie to the letter (gone, for example, is Ursula’s transformation into an Ariel-voiced “Vanessa”) but fleshes out characters with catchy new songs.

The first thing audiences who’ve seen The Little Mermaid live on stage before will notice Is the gorgeousness of its Front Row Theatricals sets, Steve Giltner’s stunningly saturated-color lighting, Bradley Allen Lock’s breathtaking array of under-the-sea and on-land costumes (provided by The Theatre Company), and Michael Aldapa’s equally eye-catching hair and makeup in a production design that rivals any Technicolor MGM musical extravaganza of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

The second thing that distinguishes this Little Mermaid from the eight previous productions I’ve seen of the Broadway musical smash is that its non-mermaid/merman characters come to life not as homosapienized versions of the movie originals but as puppets (constructed by Pro Puppet Makers).

In other words, instead of seeing an actor dressed as a cross between a crab and a human, a fish and a human, or a bird and a human, we see Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle looking just as if they’ve crawled, swum, or flown from the big or small screen to the James Armstrong Theatre stage, and the same can be said about those eeevil eels Flotsam and Jetsam.

 For these two reasons alone, Torrance Theatre Company had even this seasoned reviewer feeling almost as if I were seeing The Little Mermaid for the very first time.

Glenn Kelman directs with oceans of pizzazz, eliciting one top notch performance after another, in particular the breakout star turn of Hannah Kobayashi as the love-smitten Ariel, the musical theater major taking a summer break from Syracuse University to captivate the home crowd with her effervescent charm and enchanting vocals.

Ray Tezanos makes for the dreamiest of Prince Erics, James Hormel gives King Triton paternal warmth, gravitas, and some impressive musculature, Danny Gaitan plays Grimsby with a combination of avuncular wisdom and youthful charm, and Bailey Walker-Seiter is a hilariously French-accented hoot as a pigtailed Chef Louis.

Diana Cabell (Arista), Greta Cox (Allana), Kylie Christensen (Adella), Gelline Ibarrola (Andrina), Jenna Lockwood (Aquata), and Eileen Cherry O’Donnell (Atina) create six distinctly different “Meristers” while “swimming” around on retractable roller shoes, and their girl-group harmonies in “She’s In Love” make it a showstopper.

Steven Flowers (an engagingly zesty Sebastian), Bryan Eid (an adorably lovestruck Flounder), Ryan Johnson (a wonderfully wacky Scuttle), and Amber Florin and Phoebe Eskovitz (slitheringly sinister as Flotsam and Jetsam) are all five absolutely terrific, though having them manipulate and voice puppets, as innovative and effective as that concept may be, does mean that it’s the puppets that command our attention rather than the puppeteers this time round.

Most spectacular of all is Christopher Tiernan’s evilicious Ursula, the nefarious sea witch reconceived as a glamorous, high-heeled, big-voiced, platinum blonde bombshell more than ready for her RuPaul’s Drag Race debut.

Choreographer Katish “Blaze” Adams knows how to bring out the best from a community theater cast, and if the taptastic “Positoovity” breaks this particular production’s bird=puppet rules by having life-sized Gulls do the dancing (leaving puppet Scuttle to simply do nothing more than saying), it’s a bona fide showstopper nonetheless.

Last but not least, music director Bradley Hampton not only brings out the best in cast vocals and harmonies, he conducts a sixteen-piece orchestra to rival Broadway’s best.

KaMiko Adams is assistant choreographer. Gia Jordahl is producing artistic director. Giltner’s lighting design is provided by Streetlite, LLC and sound design is provided by DNB Design Sound. Caitlin Leong is sound engineer. Daniel Scipio is stage manager and Jorge Macias and Leonore Booth are assistant stage managers.

I’ve now seen nine different productions of Disney The Little Mermaid. Most have featured the same or similar production designs. Some have incorporated flight choreography allowing audiences to see Ariel “swim” under the sea. None have had puppeteers voicing and manipulating Ariel’s fish-and-foul friends…until now.

Torrance Theatre Company’s Little Mermaid may not be the very best of them all, but for its uniqueness alone it stands out among the bunch. Awed and entertained in equal measure, I had a swimmingly good time.

James Armstrong Theatre, 3330 Civic Center Drive, Torrance.
www.torrancetheatrecompany.com

–Steven Stanley
August 3, 2024
Photos: Torrance Theatre Company

Tags: Alan Menken, Howard Ashman, James Armstrong Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Torrance Theatre Company