Ready or not, Ariel's going to Broadway

[crazy4wdw]

Ready or not, Ariel's going to Broadway

Reviews have been mixed, but the 'Little Mermaid' producer says fans' affection runs deep.

New York Times News
September 22, 2007

t's the day before the Denver premiere of The Little Mermaid, and Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatrical Productions, is candid: The show needs work.

Based on the much-loved movie, The Little Mermaid cost a reported $15 million, and to some degree, has the Disney franchise reputation on the line. It is scheduled to open on Broadway Dec. 6.

Schumacher has had his hands full this year:

There was the closing of Beauty and the Beast after 13 years; the steady weeks of million-dollar grosses for Mary Poppins on Broadway and the demise of its struggling London counterpart; and the belated entry of High School Musical into the Disney theatrical catalog.

There was also, of course, that Tarzan unpleasantness.

Now comes Mermaid, which for the most part has stayed under the national radar while in Denver.

The last Disney show that opened in New York without an out-of-town tryout was Tarzan, and everybody knows what happened there: It was panned by critics and received indifferently by Broadway fans.

"We were severely damaged by our inability to just do our work in those first few weeks," Schumacher says of Tarzan, which closed in July after running for a little more than a year.

He also points out that the affection for the Disney movie version of Tarzan did not run nearly as deep as the affection for The Little Mermaid does. Now, he says, he has the right project.

When a show has no excuses and high stakes, one would imagine that the bloggers, reporters and Broadway wags would be eyeballing it.

But for some reason this did not happen. Schumacher did nothing to change that. "Why," he asks, "would I want to make noise when I'm out of town?"

The reviews that did emerge for The Little Mermaid, which sold out its 2,200-seat theater in Denver, were surprising.

Local notices were mixed -- skeptical to glowing -- but the chief critic for Variety gave it an outright pan.

"It's a distraction when you're out of town and you get national criticism, but I can't let it guide me," Schumacher says.

He says the elements of Mermaid that he and the creative team are working on are not, in many cases, the elements that were criticized in the reviews.

And he points out that Beauty and the Beast received bad in-town reviews and had a pretty good go of it for 13 years.

 

[plutospup]

My prediction (FWIW)...Scuttle will steal the show!

Ed Korbich, who will play Scuttle has done everything from Broadway to PB&J's "Flick the Duck" for Disney Channel. Buddy Hackett did the voice of Scuttle in the movie, and I have no doubt Korbich will give life once again to Scuttle.

 

[EUROPACL]

Well if nothing else Disney really has the timing of these things down they really know how to strike while the iron is hot. Tron 2 is on the way...just in the nick of time. I'm hoping for a Black Hole the musical to be announced soon.