As a parent, I got lucky.<\/p>\n
No, this isn\u2019t that start of a fatherly brag session — not that there\u2019s anything wrong with that — but the point is, if the timing of my parenthood had been off by just a bit, I could have gotten stuck taking my kids to see The Aristocats<\/i> or The Great Mouse Detective<\/i> or something equally dismal from the 1980s Disney oeuvre.\u00a0 Instead, my kids went through their Disney years just as latter-day classics like Beauty And The Beast<\/i> and Aladdin<\/i> and The Lion King<\/i> were coming out.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the movie that kicked off this animated renaissance, The Little Mermaid<\/i>.\u00a0 Packed with classic Howard Ashman-Alan Menken numbers like \u201cPart Of Your World,\u201d \u201cKiss The Girl\u201d and the deliriously catchy, Academy Award-winning \u201cUnder The Sea,\u201d the original animated feature was a regular in our household for half a decade or more.<\/p>\n
In its more recent Broadway incarnation, the original Ashman-Menken songs from the movie have been supplemented with a variety of tunes that cover musically much of the story-advancing ground that\u2019s handled with dialogue in the movie version.\u00a0 The new songs team composer Menken with lyricist Glenn Slater, who does his best — with moderate success — to replicate Ashman\u2019s unique combination of edgy wit and big-hearted romanticism.\u00a0 (Ashman died of AIDS in 1991.)<\/p>\n
Sierra Boggess does a nice job in the lead role of Ariel, conveying the right balance of innocent curiosity and stubborn determination.\u00a0 Her performance on the key early number \u201cPart Of This World\u201d is especially spot-on, capturing the bubbling emotion of the original and hitting the big theater-filling notes to perfection.\u00a0 Just like in the movie, though, Sebastien \u2013 a.k.a. Tituss Burgess — more or less steals the show with the expansive production numbers \u201cUnder The Sea\u201d and \u201cKiss The Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 10 new songs don\u2019t always click; \u201cShe\u2019s In Love,\u201d for example, goes in a faux-Motown direction that feels out of sync with the sunny island vibe of the original motion picture soundtrack.\u00a0 But any false notes are quickly forgiven whenever the cast returns to familiar numbers like the deliciously nasty \u201cPoor Unfortunate Souls,\u201d delivered with all appropriate gusto by Sherie Rene Scott in the role of the sea-witch Ursula.<\/p>\n
Whether you\u2019ve seen the Broadway show or just carry fond memories of the big-screen original, this soundtrack is an entertaining reminder of a timeless tale, once again well-told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7274],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-40985","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-original-broadway-cast-recording","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40985"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40985"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}