The Little Mermaid
Bristol Old Vic

BRISTOL have come up trumps with this year’s festive offering, a simplified but gloriously colourful and dynamic ecological version of Hans Christian Andersen’s much loved fairy tale.

The titular character, the only remaining mermaid in an ocean devasted by oil production, sacrifices her subaquatic existence in a desperate attempt to pursue the human who promises some hope for restoring the coral and revitalising sea life.

Director Miranda Cromwell and designer Ruby Pugh have taken Sonali’s Bhattacharyya’s lively script, full of sea puns and fascinating aquatic creatures, and injected it with vibrancy and a number of inspirational visual effects. The aerial performances dominated by Holly Downey’s stunning routines and Liana Cottrill’s graceful depiction of the mermaid create a truly three-dimensional production.

The vivid underwater world of fascinatingly strange sea creatures living near a dying marshmallow-style reef are captured with a sense of fun and larger than life costumes while still retaining informative elements of their biological existences. 

Femi Temowo’s use of a diverse range of catchy musical styles for the different creatures gives this play a broad appeal and allows characters such as Alison Fitzjohn’s villain, Inky Slick, kitted out in a glossy black outfit, an immediately recognisable quality with her own house-rocking, Meatloaf style number.

Liana Cottrill’s enchantingly eponymous mermaid and John Leader’s youthfully awkward, would-be saviour of the seas make for an engaging couple as they battle the comical excesses of his family’s Vanity Fair life-style and their destructive oil production business.

The atmospherically integrated live music, flowing stylised movements and imaginative use of sea cloths keeps the rhythms of the tides and currents constantly alive and contrast amusingly to the stilted poses and mannered pretence of the humans on show.

Although this is not Bristol Old Vic’s only seasonal show on offer with a simple, localised, modern trilogy of brief fairy tales (Little Red) for the very young in the Studio, the Little Mermaid on their main stage is the stand out production. Rightly appealing to children and adults alike, it does everything an Xmas production should do and much more. Although near the start of its run, there were already members of the audience who were seeing it for a second time.

Runs until January 11, box office: bristololdvic.org.uk