Writer-director Polly Teale’s Mermaid for Shared Experience dives plumb into the middle of the feminist debate about fairytales. Does that sound recherché, a bit to the side of major things? Perhaps less central than Ed Miliband and David Cameron roaring at each other in the House of Commons? Less urgent than Jeremy Clarkson’s views about non-English-born taxi drivers? Teale wants us to think again.
Like Angela Carter, who considered the Sleeping Beauty a dodgy model for a dynamic girl as she didn’t have much “get-up-and-go”, Teale sees difficulty in a familiar romance. After all, to stop being fishy and get to her prince, the mermaid agrees to have her tongue cut out. If you want to be an attractive young woman, you had better be mute.
To underline the point, Teale intertwines the Hans Christian Andersen tale with a 21st-century story about growing up, the rise of self-consciousness and the loss of innocence. Underneath the ocean, no one has mirrors, and creatures loll around making patterns on the seabed with their tails. On land, there is warfare and spite; not even princesses, one of whom wears a fascinator, have it easy.
The visual realisation of these worlds is lovely. In Tom Piper’s unDisneyfied design, musty mirrors glimmer around the stage. A rough wooden platform divides upper and underworlds, land and sea. There are no coral groves, fluorescent crystals or bubbling mires. There is not even (and this is a step too pure) the toad that nuzzles up to the sea witch to eat from her mouth. When mermaids swoop up from the ocean bed into the fresh air, they duck their heads into a bucket of water so that they arrive at the surface dripping and spluttering.
Finely choreographed by Liz Ranken, the mermaids undulate and slide, topple backward into somersaults and handsprings. There are no scaly costumes, just oatmeal tights, but the continual motion means that the action shimmers. At the side of the stage, a chorus of young women form a mermaid troupe, rocking gently as if they were borne up by waves. In each town to which the show tours, a new troupe is being recruited.
So far, so good. But Teale’s script crams too much in. The contemporary references are too insistent. Not only bullying but bulimia. Not just trainer envy but war in Afghanistan. Tiny but true parallels – the mermaid’s agony when she first has toes is compared to titupping on stilettoes – are in danger of being drowned out. Still, this is early in the run of a hugely ambitious show. It has time to find its fins.
• Mermaid tours to Leeds, Mold, Cardiff, Southampton, Edinburgh, Watford and Oxford until 23 May
