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Mickey-Jo saw BOTH of the Little Mermaid prequel musicals | REVIEWS of UNFORTUNATE ★★★★ and SEA WITCH ★★
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- [00:00]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [00:08]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [00:12]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [00:21]
Stephen
That's right. Hey hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [00:26]
Hayden
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler Al he'll be wrong.
- [00:33]
Stephen
Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellows wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:40]
Theatre Critic
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- [00:45]
Advertiser 1
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- [00:47]
Theatre Critic
each with its own small fries, drink and Four Piece McNuggets. There's actually no rush.
- [00:51]
Advertiser 1
I'm just excited for McDonald's for a limited time only.
- [00:53]
Theatre Critic
Prices of participation may vary.
- [00:54]
Advertiser 1
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- [01:28]
Theatre Critic
so over the weekend London's theatre going audiences, myself included, had the unique opportunity of being able to see two different new music, each depicting the as yet untold story of the Sea Witch from the Little Mermaid. One of these is Sea Witch, a brand new musical which made its world premiere in concert at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, the other is Unfortunate, currently playing at the Other Palace Theatre in its latest iteration after years of post Edinburgh Festival fringe development. And while each of these Little Mermaid spin offs is presumably angling for long lasting success, ironically only one of the two of them has legs to let you know which sank and which knows how to swim. Today I will be reviewing both, but just before I do a quick reintroduction to me oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening on podcast platforms for the benefit of the podcast listeners who I don't like to exclude from, you know, anything else that happens in these reviews, I am currently sporting hand tentacles which, as it happens, already cutting off circulation to arguably my most important fingers. It will come as no surprise to those of you who have been familiar with my work for some time that I was determined to commit to this bit and indeed that I owned this many different finger tentacles. But additionally, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, I would like to dedicate this particular silliness to anyone who has ever commented that I need to stop moving my hands during these reviews because if it annoyed you before, boy are you gonna hate this one. We got tentacle activity going on here. Gosh, I'm annoying myself. Anyway, today we are reviewing two different musicals, sixteen tentacles cumulatively, both of which unbelievably are offering backstories about the Sea Witch from the Little Mermaid. Huge differences between the two. Tonally, these are completely different shows in terms of the scale of these productions. Completely different shows. One of them making its world premiere with this epic, huge concert staging on one of London's largest stages, Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Big venue, huge capacity, very grand. And the other is the latest evolution of a show I first saw years ago in a lecture theatre as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. And while each of them owe their origins obviously to the Little Mermaid, neither would have arrived on the stage, it seems, if it weren't for the musical Wicked, which similarly tells audiences the story of an iconic villainess's unknown past. Otherwise, though, get ready to hear about utterly different shows with completely different material and honestly, variable levels of success. And as you listen to my thoughts about each of these shows, I would love to hear yours. If you have had the chance to see the Untold Story of Ursula the Sea Witch or the musical Sea Witch at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in concert. Let everyone know your thoughts and feelings in the comments section down below. And if you would like to hear more of what I think as a full time theatre crit here on social media, make sure you're subscribed or following me on podcast platforms where I share the same reviews minus the tentacles. Anyway, let's. Let's talk about some sea witches, shall we? So we will commence with Unfortunate, because it's the first of the two that I saw yesterday, but also I have been seeing versions of this show for years. I first saw it, I think, pre Pandemic, even at the Edinburgh Fringe when it was truly like five people in A very small capacity lecture theatre auditorium at Edinburgh. That was a one act version of the show and every time that I have seen it since, including a return engagement at a larger venue at a subsequent Edinburgh Festival Fringe, an off West End run at Southwark Playhouse, and now ITS Most Commercial 2 Act Interval Inclusive run yet at the Other Palace. The show has been heavily rewritten every single time, specifically the introductory moments. But what this is and what separates it from the other Sea Witch musical that we're going to talk about later is the backstory of Ursula the sea witch from Disney's the Little Mermaid. This specifically is an expansion on the Disney version of the story and the show really leans into that. A lot of its most successful comedy comes from the lampooning of Disney and other Disney characters and references and even some, you know, tongue in cheek commentary about Disney's characters and representation. There is a song that I've always loved in every iteration of the show which now falls amongst the first act called We Didn't make it to Disney. It is sung by the less attractive aquatic characters of the Dark Waters, who, in a song which combines theme park ready compositions and scathing lyrics, tell us about how they weren't deemed attractive or conventional enough to be in the Disney movie or to be a part of the Disney brand. There's lines in there like I'm fat but I'm not funny, I have a regional accent but I'm not poor and we can't be screened in China because we're gay. And generally with this show, I think it is perhaps at its best when it is providing jokes for Disney adults who are ready to experience a little bit of NSFW sort of twisted comedy about these nostalgic stories. But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself and I ought to tell you a little bit more about this material. So like I said, it is the backstory of Ursula, not unlike the musical Wicked. We begin at the moment of her presumed demise, only for Ursula to arrive and a la Emma Roberts in American Horror Story Coven tell us Surprise. I bet you thought you'd be seeing the last of me. My issue with this every single time since the first time I saw the show is we actually aren't. And I think they just need to via like the sound cues at the beginning of the show portray the moment of death. Because when you think about Ursa in the film, that's not actually the thing you most remember. It works with Wicked because you think Wicked Witch in the wizard of Oz, you think about the melting you Think, ah, what a world, what a world. That's one of her most iconic moments in the original film. And with Ursula, all of her most iconic moments are separate to this, I would say it's. It's poor unfortunate Souls. It's those moments, it's her introduction, it's her becoming Vanessa. And so it would not hurt to remind an audience who haven't necessarily, you know, watched the Little Mermaid in anticipation of how exactly Ursula meets her fate in that film. If we just had a little bit of a sound cue giving us like, oh, no, I've been hit by a boat. Only for her to then appear, then we're all on the same page because as it stands, she just comes out immediately and goes, I bet you didn't think you'd be seeing me. And she's on the poster. And we've all booked for a show called Unfortunate the Untold Story of Ursula the Sea Witch. So we in fact only expected to be seeing her. If we didn't see her, we all would have been thoroughly surprised and more than likely a little disappointed. Anyway, as per Wicked, we then flash back to Ursula's adolescence. We go back to an academic setting when she crosses paths with the young king to be the then Prince Triton, as well as Sebastian the Crab, now sporting a more politically correct Irish accent and a handful of other new characters. And their entire thesis for Ursula in this show is that she is an outspoken, politically engaged young feminist. And that's the entire idea of this musical. Not unlike Elphaba Throp in Wicked, Ursula is misunderstood and marginalized for her outward appearance and secretly covets love, but also is simultaneously pushing back against what she perceives to be injustices within underwater society, which it turns out there are, and I say Wicked. I actually think that this show specifically wouldn't necessarily exist if it weren't for another Wicked parody that happened first. I am talking about a show I actually still haven't seen, but it is Twisted, created by Starkid, and from what I can remember, that was really the first major musical to parody the Wicked formula, to take a different well known villain and using an adjective based title, give them a backstory that actually explains why they, the hero of their own narrative and were misunderstood by the world around them and misrepresented in this big propaganda machine. So you had Wicked, then you had Twisted, and it was only after that, I think, that you could get a show like Unfortunate, with its title being yet another adjective, obviously referencing poor unfortunate souls, which the opening number of this show also does. Now it has been rewritten and it's sort of as good as the previous version was. The old version of this sort of pseudo Poor Unfortunate Souls introduction was a song called Nasty, which specifically referenced a lot of the rhetoric aimed towards Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US election, which at the time when I first saw this show was a more recent memory. It probably makes more sense now, years later, to not invoke that as specifically. Instead, the song has become a more overt reference to Poor Unfortunate Souls. In fact, the final sort of 10 or 12 notes of the song are almost exactly the same as the ending of that. And while I'm not about to personally take anyone to task because I'm not the copyright police, Disney quite famously are. So, you know, if nothing else brave the show has been written, I should point out, by Robin Grant and Daniel Fox. Robin Grant originally played the role of Ursner and was quite brilliant in the first iteration of the show and now largely works as a creative. In fact has just been announced to be directing the first ever musical from Mischief Theatre later this year. Daniel Fox, meanwhile, has come to prominence as a very successful and hilarious stand up comedian and podcast personality. They wrote the book and the lyrics with their very recognizable wit. If you know either of their work, if you know Daniels comedy, you will hear a lot of it in this. The music, meanwhile, has been written by Tim Gilvin and there are some great songs and unfortunately I've always enjoyed this score. I would say that it combines Disney parody with queer pop. The title song, Unfortunate, which now ends the first act, could be a Eurovision number from the nation of Atlantica. One of the most genius, crowd pleasing moments of the show's material though, which I have loved ever since I saw this show for the very first time, is a parody of one of the greatest I want songs of all time that is part of your world. Originally written by the geniuses Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Only in Unfortunate everything is sort of shifted. And just like in Wicked, we find out that Glinda is not, you know, the perfect moral ideal that we have been introduced to in the wizard of Oz, we learn some things about Ariel. If Ursula is to be this empowered, sex positive, body positive feminist icon who is all about encouraging women to use their voices, Ariel has to kind of be the opposite idea of that and it materializes that everything Ariel goes through is actually a sort of a test from Ursula, but more so an incentive for Ariel to understand the importance of using her voice and how that's so much more valuable than the affection of A generic man. Hold on. Pause. Everything. My. My tentacles have become stuck together. Anyway, to this end, the character of Ariel ingeniously is reconceived in this show as a sort of a L Island contestant who wants nothing more than to be as she sings in this part of your world parody song, where the boys with d Cks are. That is a spoiler I have been refusing to divulge online for years now, but it's so good, I had to talk about it. It is a stellar punchline among many, and it simultaneously ushers us into some of the show's most wild, risque, riotous comedy, but also affords it a really unique identity and clear perspective on the material. We understand who Ursula is and why we should be on her side. We understand who Ariel is, and she's incredibly charming. But also, we aren't rooting for this to go the way that she wants it to.
- [13:26]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan, fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [13:33]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [13:38]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [13:46]
Stephen
That's right.
- [13:47]
Advertiser 1
Hey.
- [13:47]
Theatre Critic
Hey.
- [13:47]
Stephen
So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [13:51]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [13:58]
Stephen
Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [14:05]
Advertiser 2
Okay, I have to tell you, I was just looking on ebay, where I
- [14:09]
Theatre Critic
go for all kinds of things I love.
- [14:10]
Advertiser 2
And there it was.
- [14:11]
Theatre Critic
That hologram trading card. One of the rarest. The last one I needed for my set.
- [14:16]
Advertiser 2
Shiny like the designer handbag of my dreams. One of a kind. Ebay had it. And now everyone's asking. Ooh, where'd you get your windshield wipers?
- [14:25]
Advertiser 1
Ebay has all the parts that fit my car.
- [14:27]
Theatre Critic
No more annoying, just beautiful.
- [14:31]
Advertiser 2
Millions of finds, each with a story. EBay. Things people love.
- [14:43]
Theatre Critic
Meanwhile, there's a lot of background politics. Encounter a lot of the other Little Mermaid characters, as well as other wider Disney characters, because the usual chef from the Little Mermaid who tries to the fricassee Sebastian, as it were, is instead replaced with Colette of Ratatouille. Fame, who opens the second act with a brilliant number in which she, among other things, laments, as she describes it, the whole rat debacle. She is portrayed in this production by Ali Dart, who is an alumnus of Fat Rascal Theatre and who has been with the show since its very beginning, although that character is newer. And Ali is a joy to watch on stage because she so understands this material and the tone and the comedy and how it needs to work. She also plays Sebastian in this Act 2 opening number. She juggles both roles simultaneously. She isn't the only performer in the cast to do that. So does James Spence, also new to the show and new to me, I believe as a recent graduate performer, he is sensational. He plays Prince Eric. He plays one of Ursula's two gay bestie eels with an unmistakably Germanic accent and a strange seductive quality. He also plays King Triton's weirdly twink bodied father, which is a scene stealing role based on his physicality alone. If I'm remembering correctly, they tried this thing at Southwark Playhouse, Elephant, where they actually had River Medway, who was then playing Ariel as a drag performer, actually suspended. And in the history of Disney's the Little Mermaid on stage, there have been various different schools not of fish, but of thought about how they can portray underwater movement and swimming. And they had Heelys at the Luntfontanne Theatre on Broadway. I saw it at Paper Mill Playhouse and they were on wires and it looked very graceful and gorgeous. And so they tried to do Flying at Southwark Playhouse. I think what they're doing now is the best possible version of this because simply what they do is they move around the stage. Occasionally they don't even bother. And then sometimes the merpeople will do this sort of strange, determined, flappy movement behind themselves. Or when Ariel finds herself adjacent to the shore or the land, she will do this very cumbersome movement of flopping over herself and rolling on or off stage. And it's so much funnier because it's so clearly unnecessary, but they commit to it with utter ridiculousness. It reminds me of the physical comedy of mischief shows, actually, when you know that is the law of the space and you have to obey those rules and you have to participate in the nonsense. And Robin Grant continues to direct the show. Ally Duck Art is also the resident director, keeping it all in the original family. We should also mention though, the choreography by Melody Sinclair and the brilliant design by Jasmine Swan. Jasmine is the set and costume designer and puppetry co designer along with Michaela Teodoro and everything about the aesthetic of this production delivers perfect parody. It has to be recognizable. It also has to be far enough away that it isn't actual copyright infringement, but heightened and silly. And it's, it's brilliantly well achieved. It also, while resembling the most commercially viable version of the show yet, and I'll say a little bit more about that in just a moment, retains the feel and sensibility of a Fringe production. One that is going to be portrayed by a small company of actors playing different roles in manic succession with only a couple of set pieces. And there's a charm in that as well. This production has on multiple occasions been scaled up before and I think think toning it down just a little bit has been a great choice. It does seem as though in bringing it back again, they are trying to find what can be the show's most ongoingly successful iteration, perhaps to tour around the UK as it has done before, or even tour internationally. And I think the huge success of parody musicals like Titanique have really changed the game for this sub genre of musical theater. These shows that used to be relegated to the likes of the Edinburgh Festival, Fringe or off West End spaces can now be major commercial hits in much bigger theaters. I have a couple more principal cast members to tell you about. Julie Yamini, always a sensation on stage, is playing Ariel in this, using what I believe is at least a version of her native Australian accent, which is a great character choice. Julie is one of the most versatile musical theater performers I have ever seen and it's a great use of her talents in this show, which is lovely to see. Blair Robertson is also relatively new to the company as King Triton. He embraces, I think, the ridiculousness of, of the role while also delivering like musical theater leading man, love interest, baritone, sincerity very well. And of course the leading role of Ursula the sea witch is played in this production by Sam Buttery, who succeeds on so many fronts. The characterization of Ursula is there from the very beginning and Sam Buttery can banter with an audience very, very well. There were a couple of joyous, unexpected, almost derailing ad lib moments with members of the front couple. Ro during the matinee performance that I saw. And Sam Bathory, as I have experienced before when I saw her play the MC in Cabaret at the Lido Theatre in Paris, is very comfortable in that particular arena. She's also a proven vocalist. It is a really tricky score to sing and it's a difficult role to really nail every single facet of. I think it's a deceptively difficult character. And I'm not sure I've ever seen a performer who can fire on every single cylinder or, you know, hit every single tentative, as it were, because she is, like I said, body positive, sex positive feminist icon, outspoken and proud. But also this sense of insecurity and lust and resentment. And to find a way in which to play all of these tangible and grand and dramatic emotions within the context of this wacky parody comedy show is a very difficult thing. And there's something specifically, I think, about the Hillary Clinton era politics of Ursula that they haven't all the way been able to communicate to audiences. And speaking of communicating things to audiences, there are a couple of sections of this score which are so fiendishly fast to sing. You have to not only be a strong musical theatre vocalist, you kind of have to be able to rap as Ursula as well, which Sam Buttery is maybe a little less confident with, but makes up for it undeniably with presence and attitude in the rest of the the show. I remain very, very fond of this musical as I have always been. I do think that it could be even more raucous. I think it could be genuinely laugh a minute rather than taking a little bit of time to get going. I think some of those introductory moments, the opening number, it could still be a little more refined, a little more reworked, but it already is a show which has been rewritten several times and over its last few iterations has already been entertained, entertaining so many audience members. A big part of this show has always worked and has always been funny. So if you're looking for a naughty musical laugh. I didn't necessarily hit this very hard in my explanation, but do not take children to this show. It is definitely adults, or if you are a Disney adult like myself, who might enjoy the very warped sense of nostalgia that it affords you. Go and check out Unfortunate the Untold Story of Ursula the Sea Witch at the other Palace Theatre. Or perhaps in future at a theatre near. Near you. At which point we're going to send that particular show back into the ocean as we go fishing for another. This time the brand new musical which I saw in concert at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Sea Witch. So the time has come for us to talk about the new musical Sea Witch and oh boy, which I am of course spelling B U O Y Nautical humour. I have so much of it today and in the nicest possible way, this was a little bit of a shipwreck last night at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. And the thing is, is I still remain unconvinced that that particular stage is a good platform for the world premieres of brand new musicals. And a lot of shows, often American produced, tend to find themselves there, possibly just for bragging rights and prestige thereafter. You know, we made our world premiere at Theatre Royal Drury Lane with this gorgeous concert. Look at these photos. Photographs and the stakes are audacious and so you have to respect the ambition of the whole thing. And the scale of this concert was not insignificant. There is a huge amount of ambition from these creatives, from these writers in terms of what they were staging here, the scale of visual presentation. This was fully staged. There was not an orchestra present on the Drury Lane stage. They were using the entire space. There was was intense full choreography, there was costuming. We were not reading from script. There weren't that many lines of dialogue to read, so that would have been peculiar. It was led by six alumnus and peerless vocalist Natalie Parris as the titular sea witch. We will get to her story in just a moment, but alongside her the likes of Amy DiBartolomeo and Mads Murray and Michelle Visage. Very high profile cast. And the lighting. Oh, the lighting. You've never seen so much lighting in your entire life. That is until all of of those many, many dozens of lights were pointed simultaneously towards the audience, proverbially blinding us all so that we couldn't actually see anything ever again. Which as it turns out, would not be the biggest problem of the evening. But before we get onto the show, let me tell you a little bit more about this particular story, how it differs to the likes of Unfortunate and where it has come from. So this is adapted from a young adult novel of the same name, Sea Witch, written by Sarah Henning. The show was created and conceived jointly by Michael David Glover, who has also written the book, and Christopher Russell, who has also directed with music and lyrics by Shegun Fawole. And I do think as far as the material goes, the compositions specifically, if not the lyrics, are the strongest aspect of the material. They are epic and grand and exciting and passionate, if a little derivative of of power ballads that we've heard in musical theatre previously. There was a bit of an uncanny, you will be found esque moment in some of the backing vocal harmony arrangements. There was also some familiarity to the greatest showman era, Pasek and Paul as well. I was very ready to start singing from now on. And we can talk about too many songs within this score sounding the same. We can talk about the fact that there are far too many entirely unearned power ballots. We can talk about the way that the show is structured and the fact that you have, on more than one occasion, three or four lines of dialogue separating these huge songs. You have scenes that are set up by one character saying, like, oh, I don't think that that young man has any interest in me romantically. And another person saying, well, why don't you go and ask him? They say two words to each other and then they sing a song which is unironically like, what if we were just in love? Which ends with the two of them embracing an apomatic pose. Prior to that, two characters meet for the very first time and then sing a song about their new huge friendship. And the feminism of this moment, made for every woman there, is not, unlike Angela Dwebber's Cinderella before it, a little bit of a feminist problem with this show, but we will get to that. Because I think bigger than any of these material issues is the fact that nothing about this story really justifies becoming a stage musical in the first place. This version of a sea witch backstory nods to the Little Mermaid in a couple of ways, but is also very familiar of Cinderella. It's the second musical I have seen within the space of a week in which a young prince is throwing a ball and has to choose between prospective brides. And, you know, not to be cynical and not to suggest that people can't tell their own new stories, but realistically, if we're doing a Little Mermaid backstory, the version of the Little Mermaid that people are going to associate that, that with is the Disney version. So to try and do something that stands apart from that, not only in its narrative and the names of its characters, etc, this is very much not an Ursula the Sea Witch backstory, but a, you know, Cinderella the sea Witch backstory in many ways, but also tonally, we are just a million miles away from it as well. And knowing that this is a young adult novel, and having not read the book, if there is more to it than rivalry between these young women, women over the affections of a man who they each grew up alongside, who ultimately is going to have to make a choice between them, which affects the outcome of not only their friendship, but also their lives, if there's more nuance to it than that, then it doesn't come across in this adaptation, although it's hard to imagine how it could when there is so little space to tell any kind of a story here. The plot of this Evening was sort of inexplicable because like. Like I said, so little dialogue between songs. I suspect there may have been more dialogue in the material that was trimmed due to the running time already being in excess of two and a half hours. There was so much music, not all of which was necessary, especially because a lot of songs articulated the same emotional idea and only articulated that idea relentlessly for two and a half, three minutes. You had songs which weren't able to move a narrative forwards with storytelling lyrics so much much as sit in an emotional moment and declare it repeatedly with relatively little nuance and next to no poetry. There were a whole handful of different numbers which all felt like this show's answer to no good deed. And you may be wondering, why adapt this story in the first place? Why do something that is going to be commercially challenging by tethering yourself to the Little Mermaid, but not in a way that audiences are expecting. Why do it at Theatre Royal Drury Lane? And I think Wicked is the real answer here. And while I celebrate the artistry and the creativity of all of these writers, these creatives, I do think that it feels like an attempt to piggyback in some ways on the success of Wicked to take this novel retelling the story of a famous villainess and offering insight into her adolescence, but specifically this tumultuous friends to enemies storyline with another young woman who she grew up alongside, and this notion of, like, who the real villain is and what she gave up and all of that stuff leading into the events of the Little Mermaid. This one doesn't happen alongside it as unfortunate does. This one truly, like, starts with Ariel, flashes back to how the sea witch became the sea witch and then ends with that moment again. But it does feel like that worked for Wicked. Let's try and do a version of that for ourselves. And it's one thing to do that when it's parody, but to try and do that with utter sincerity, I just think is something of a
- [29:26]
Hayden
howdy, howdy ho. And welcome to Fantasy Fan, fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [29:34]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [29:38]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [29:47]
Stephen
That's right.
- [29:47]
Advertiser 1
Hey.
- [29:47]
Theatre Critic
Hey.
- [29:48]
Stephen
So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [29:52]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what what's next? Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [29:59]
Stephen
News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.
- [30:06]
Advertiser 2
Wasn't that delicious?
- [30:07]
Theatre Critic
So good. Your bill, ladies.
- [30:09]
Advertiser 1
I got it.
- [30:10]
Advertiser 2
No, I got it. Seriously. I assist.
- [30:14]
Theatre Critic
I assisted. First
- [30:17]
Advertiser 1
people with the Wells Fargo Active Cash credit card prefer to pay because they earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Okay.
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Advertiser 2
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- [30:28]
Advertiser 1
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- [30:38]
Theatre Critic
Fool's Errand. Meanwhile, as we're comparing and contrasting these two different shows, it's fascinating the unfortunate, even though though it's the comedy of the two, had more of a perspective on the feminism of the story and who this version of the Sea Witch was than Sea Witch does. The character here, played by Natalie Paris, whose name is Evie, is again a young woman who has been marginalized in this presumably the Scandinavian fictional kingdom. She is judged harshly by those around her because of an accident that took place when she was younger, which claimed that the life of her best friend Anna. But even though just about everybody else in society despises Evie, the prince does not. The two of them grew up together as childhood friends, even though they come from different worlds. Where have we heard that before? Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella. Only there is a new component here, because this particular kingdom, which presumably is coastal, it's only ever implied and also presumably gained wealth on the export of tulle and other draped fabrics. Also, and for historic reason, reasons, hates witches, has this annual festival paying homage to all of the witches that they have killed over the years, successfully. Truly, you have never encountered a place outside of Massachusetts that hates witches with such a passion, which is not ideal for Evie, who we learn is an adolescent witch a la Sabrina, or her witchy guardian, Michelle Visage. And while the two of them inexplicably continue to live there, they constantly remind themselves of the fact that they must keep their identities secret. Secret. In spite of the fact that Michelle's character is dressed like the chatgpt response to the prompt what does a witch look like? And it's a shame, because were it not for the fact that being witches is clearly an important part of their cultural identity, and we can draw parallels there with other marginalized communities, it really wouldn't seem to be that much of a problem, considering there is so little magic in this story and in this show, relatively speaking, in Sea Witch, very little sea and very little Witch. Eventually, actually, mermaids swim their way into the story, mostly by way of a flashback, which I will say was portrayed in this particular concert with next to no aquatic whimsy. But even then, the magic of it all feels largely redundant. And this is absolutely a spoiler alert for the end of the show. But when one character almost instantly turns from romantic idealist to vengeful villainess, she uses her apparently dark and extraordinary powers to stab the prince who spurned her in the lower gut. At which point our protagonist Evie goes about trying to perform a spell that will exchange her life force with his Ti moon in Once on this Island Style. In spite of the fact that the knife hasn't even been removed yet, there's no guarantee that it severed any vital organs, and no one has even attempted basic first aid, like, he clearly isn't dead and she's already, like, lying down on the train tracks. But anyway, the sea witch in Unfortunate is an empowered feminist icon. And in this story we have multiple different young women, including an antagonist who exists only to bully Evie by saying completely contradictory statements like, you know, the prince doesn't even care about you. I'm surprised he remembered you existed to even invite you today versus coming back in and messing things up by being like, don't you know he's in love with her? It's clear to everyone all these young women who, like in Angela Dwebber's Cinderella, only exist, exist to be each other's adversaries. Even with Maz as the Queen, there is so little female friendship and allyship that doesn't go south in this show. And the ultimate moments of sacrifice are entirely about a man who may not himself be Prince Eric, but who is no less generic. And, you know, going back to the presentation of this performance, it wasn't unimpressive. The choreography by Dean Lee and the dancers was all very high energy, but the choreography, like the lighting, felt as though it would be much more at home in a recording artist's concert tour than a musical presentation. There wasn't much of a sense of narrative storytelling within this dance language. The cast was almost entirely made up of extraordinary vocalists, considering the score that they had with some R B and gospel influence, this very contemporary sound. They found the right voices in Natalie Paris and Amy dibart, lame Romeo, who sang the hell out of these numbers. And Maz Murray earned a mid show standing ovation with a powerhouse performance of a solo number that she sang as the queen, growling her way through this song about royal sacrifice and obligation. And if anyone was going to be able to pull off watered down Madame Morrible dialogue and an extraordinary collar. It was her. In spite of the talent of the performers on stage, though, and the determination of this material in its seriousness, there were a handful of moments, particularly in the second act, that got laughs, which presumably were not meant to. Honestly, if it hadn't been for the power of these voices and the relative slickness of the technical design, the whole thing would have approached car crash quality. Or I guess shipwreck quality in this context. Now I recognize that this is new musical theater writing and I ought to extend a certain amount of grace towards it. And believe it or not, that was the grace extended version. And very often, even when the critique is next to negative, I hope that the material can be reworked and redeveloped. And I say the book needs to be fixed or changes need to be made, or it needs to be restructured. I truly don't know if this musical is salvageable simply because I don't know if it was a strong and genuine enough concept for a musical in the first place. I am excited about these writers and the voice that they have. I think we need more attention to lyrics. I think we need a very different way rating in terms of score to book. And I think given the musical style, I would be excited for them to contend with a more contemporary, less fantastical story. It doesn't need to be huge and epic. It can be modern and honest and relatable. Something that we can actually understand and appreciate and have a reason to go and see and enjoy. So that has been my double bill of Sea Witch musical reviews. I hope that you enjoyed listening to each. Like I said, if you had the chance to see either of these shows, let me and everyone else know what you thought of them in the comments section down below. And if you would like to stay up to date with all of my upcoming reviews, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube or follow me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe
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