A WOMAN enters singing Under The Sea in a Jacques Cousteau French accent. She is wearing odd flippers and dressed like Bjork on a bad video day. A man enters in an old diver's helmet and beach pumps, to the sound of bubbling water.
They indulge in slapstick. He bashes her flippers with a trapdoor, which she proceeds to use as an implement for rearranging his nose.
Welcome to the bottom of the sea, where the aforementioned couple, Lisa Howard's Flotsam and Robin Simpson's Jetsam, are the tour guides to Hans Christian Andersen's fable of love, friendship, rejection and identity, The Little Mermaid, in a new adaptation by Mike Kenny. At a swish of a tail, or the pulling down of a dress from knee to full length, they will switch from storyteller to mermaid and shipwrecked prince.
This 50-minute marine marvel for children aged five and upwards marks the first collaboration between York Theatre Royal and Polka Theatre, the London children's theatre, where the production will transfer from July 6 to 30.
New characters, new collaboration and there is a new director, too, in Asha Kahlon, whose movement work for Pilot Theatre and the Theatre Royal bears fruit in the physical interplay of Howard and Simpson. Not only does their slapstick have snap, crackle and pop aplenty, but they give a wonderful sense of moving through water to the accompaniment of Ivan Stott's music - even if Karen Tennent's raked wooden set of a shipwreck is already exacting its toll on the rolling Howard, whose elbows are covered with sticking plaster.
Mind you, that is nothing by comparison with the pain endured by the Little Mermaid in the name of love. For her 15th birthday present to herself after saving the prince, she sacrifices her tongue and tail to the sea witch (here represented by Simpson manipulating scary tentacles on poles), in exchange for legs to join him on land. Writer Kenny and director Kahlon do not shield children from the grim reality in saccharine Disney manner.
Instead the tongue removal is accompanied by noisy crunching, Kenny describes the burning in her feet, and the storytellers can't hide their tears at the tragic finale.
Fintastic!
Box office: 01904 623568
Updated: 11:43 Thursday, June 16, 2005
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