Theatre review: Meow Meow's Little Mermaid
The Hub
****
Bittersweet, riotous and entirely uplifting, Meow Meow’s Little Mermaid uses Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale as the springboard for a poignant exploration of how ego and expectation can get in the way of human connection.
The show has all you expect from a Meow Meow production, including joyously precarious slapstick, gale-force audience participation and soaring, transporting renditions of songs ranging from Black’s Wonderful Life to Mina’s Parole, Parole, all beautifully supported by the Siren Effect Orchestra.
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Hide AdAnd while the performer’s trademark hysterical anxiety about the fragility of the spectacle of theatre is in full force, Little Mermaid takes us towards a gentler, sweeter space of inner vulnerability; indeed, it shows how the two spheres overlap. In a moment of anxiety, Meow Meow fears that her entire carnivalesque performance career has not been a mission to share beauty, laughter and understanding but instead an absurd, ramshackle spectacle: maybe she’s been “not saving but clowning”.
This show proves once more that the two are gloriously compatible.
Until 17 August. Today 10:30pm.