To rewatch The Little Mermaid as an adult is to be struck by how jam-packed the film is with queer-coded tropes: from the wifeless King Triton to the muscle-bound bodies of the mermen, the sailor-themed world of Prince Eric to the diva-esque underwater witch Ursula.
Most family viewers will overlook these tropes to focus on the enjoyable love story and the shimmering underwater visuals. But not Daniel Foxx and Robyn Grant, who have written a bombastic, bawdy, and laugh-out-loud hilarious new musical in Unfortunate, which heavily draws on the drag show tradition to retell the underwater epic through the eyes of Ursula for a new adult audience.
Like the Wicked Witch of the West and Cruella DeVille, Ursula (played here by US actress Shawna Hamic) has always been a richly imagined character whose presence asks more questions than it answers. This show capitalises on that potential, relishing the opportunity to paint a picture of camp, preposterous exuberance in contrast with the anodyne world of the film.
We begin with Ursula’s childhood in the city of Atlantica – a comic setting of political instability – before moving on to an absurd retelling of The Little Mermaid. Ursula is framed as unattractive, queer, and lower class. We are shown a hidden history where at college she meets Triton (Thomas Lowe), who is presented as a dimwitted, self-obsessed Prince Charming-type. Their budding relationship is thwarted in a wonderful comic set piece involving Triton’s scheming father King Neptune (a hilariously weird Jamie Mawsom), and his sea cucumber cousin Kathy (portrayed as a real-life cucumber in a miniature tutu). She becomes the evil witch of the film – before she is offered a chance at redemption.
This is a show bursting with innuendo, elaborate hair and make-up, and plenty of lewd off-key singing (to Tim Gilvin’s ballad-heavy score). But whatever aesthetics the creative team was going for, this is no pub drag show: Only a highly professional company – and deft direction from Robyn Grant – could pull off such a vast amount of set and costume changes, extravagant song-and-dance numbers and visual effects. Abby Clark’s colourful designs may seem a bit rough-and-ready, but this is knowingly done to satirise (with the help of a razor-sharp script) the impossible perfection of Disney, and inject a bit of camp reality.
