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‘Unfortunate’ is a musical parody upon which your childhood innocence will be shipwrecked. Ursula the sea witch was the villain in Disney's 1989 classic ‘The Little Mermaid’ (and its recent remake). But this musical retelling of her story is crude, camp and extremely horny.
Following a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe 2022, the not-safe-for-Mickey musical – written by Robyn Grant and Daniel Foxx and composed by Tim Gilvin – tells the ‘untold’ story of Ursula. Landing at Southwark Playhouse Elephant, ‘Orange is the New Black’ star Shawna Hamic has been recruited as the drag-inspired witch, while River Medway from ‘Drag Race’ picks up the baton as a basic bitch-ified Ariel, with an ensemble cast helping to hammer home that this is as much a celebration of queerness as a rehashing of the classic fish tale.
Hamic delivers a series of cutting and comic one-liners early on to set the tone. She mentions her ‘lesbian haircut’ and how her little corner of the underworld is the ‘intersection between the Barbie movie and the Hitler Youth’. It’s a bit like drag brunch bingo, without the mimosas, which makes a lot of sense given the original Ursula was inspired by Divine, the iconic ’70s drag queen. There’s also a queer-ification of the plot, with Ursula and a latexed-out Triton (Thomas Lowe) performing a will-they-won't-they duet, while a fun same-sex shakeup throws a dinglehopper in the works.
The show’s self-awareness makes it special, with numbers such as ‘We Didn’t Make it to Disney’ adding IQ points to a musical that sometimes defaults to grabbing the low-hanging fruit. The implication that ‘The Little Mermaid’ was responsible for the OceanGate submarine tragedy feels cheap and panto-esque. ‘Where the Dicks Are’ is an overbaked solo that loses all meaning after the fifty-fourth mention of male appendage. There are also speedbumps to overcome in the sound department.
But glimmers of what could be a slick, West End-worthy production do shine through. Hamic and Lowe are both pitch-perfect. ’Sucking on You’ is laugh-out-loud funny thanks to the expertly executed physical comedy. The rest of the cast is equally talented, putting in shifts as puppeteers, aerial acrobats, ventriloquists and can-can dancers. The second half especially elevates the show to something deserving of a bigger boat: here performer Allie Dart is the standout, jumping between playing an Irish Sebastian, German Flotsam/Jetsam and a French chef, without missing a beat, breaking a sweat or tangling dialects.
Moored in its current shape, the show – directed by Grant – is foot-tappingly feel-good and finally gives the gays and theys the LGBTQI+ heroine they deserved 30-plus years ago. But it hasn’t quite got a steer on whether it wants to be a vulgar cabaret, ‘Book of Mormon’ smart or the next faux-feminist jukebox hit. To make the leap from the small pond, ‘Unfortunate’ is going to have to decide which world it really wants to be part of.