The Little Mermaid

If anyone was lucky enough to catch the recent west end production of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, you will love this show. It has a similar feel, with beautifully sung Cornish inspired sea shanty’s and the ethereal mermaids songs. But it is very much its own show too.

Merryn played by Annabelle Acquino, is such an engaging mermaid heroine, even when she loses her beautiful voice. She plays the wide eyed innocence on land perfectly, experiencing everything for the first time, and producing some lovely comic moments. She is ably matched by Tom Babbage’s Cadan, and we watch them fall in love.

I thought the entire cast were excellent. As well as Acquino and Babbage, I especially liked Zach Burns as younger brother Kitto, and Lucinda Freeburn as sister Senara, but both also play multiple - and very different roles - including some very funny smugglers! Sophie Kamal and Christopher Staines also impressed. All play various roles, all very effectively.

The show really is stunning. Some of the simplest things, like the puppets, including a shoal of fish that glistened as it moved, are the most successful.

The story itself is familiar to its audience, but told in a refreshing, almost innocent way. And the music is so beautiful. This piece had clearly been devised with an audience young and old in mind. Looking around, the children in the audience were captivated. And there was no restlessness at all, the night I was there, they were completely enchanted with the magic of it all.