BRISTOL Old Vic’s 2024-25 Christmas show takes this famous story, gives it a contemporary environmental twist and creates something more beautiful, more powerful, more moving and more thoughtful than the original. It will also probably be the most inspiring Christmas show of the year – with a message that sings and swims throughout from the magical opening sequence to the final triumphant scenes.
Sonali Bhattacharyya has created a fable for our times – a story of warring sisters, a courageous young mermaid, a lonely human boy, his ruthless wealthy parents … and the dying of the coral.
Coral, the wonderful Nandi Bhebhe, is totally alienated from her evil sibling, and is fighting with her diminishing strength to save her precious home. Her sister, Inky Slick, the astonishing, funny, frightening, clowning, furious Alison Fitzjohn, has formed an alliance with oil giant Open Tide, helping the human corporation to reach down into the ocean depths to take the oil and create plastic …
Inky Slick, clothed in black as dark as her heart, is full of anger, seeking revenge and destruction. Coral is losing her beautiful colour. Increasingly bleached and fragile, she is seeing her vibrant habitat crumbling, destroying the homes of so many other sea creatures.
In complete contrast, Alison Fitzjohn also plays the kindly if clumsy Turtle, who is instantly an audience favourite.
Kai (John Leader), only child of corporate, greedy parents, Richard (Michael Elcock) and Jocasta (Corrina Buchan) knows the coral is dying and believes he can sing it back to life … but a big birthday is approaching and his time of freedom in his little boat with his music is heading for the rocks of adult responsibility.
Enter Sereia (Liana Cottrill), a creature like nothing he has ever seen – slender, beautiful, kind, wise … swimming like a fish. She is desperate to help Coral and all her sea friends.
Big theatres at Christmas make the most of their resources – technical, musical, lighting, sound … sometimes, perhaps, at the expense of the characters and the actual story.
Bristol Old Vic has plenty of theatre technology but the spectacle here is human and inventive. The sea creatures, all based on real underwater life forms, are breathtaking – everyone loves the pregnant sea horse (Michael Elcock), the fluttering fan fish, the delicate floating creatures with their silvery lights, the colourful tube-worms and the sardonic hammerhead shark.
But most of all we love Sereia, swimming up and down (she is a gifted aerialist), drawn to the lonely boy and driven to save her friend Coral and all the coral reefs. Like her storybook predecessor, the Little Mermaid has to lose her tail to be able to move into 
the human world. But her tail is always close, following her, swooping and curling, precariously winding herself up and down and joyfully swirling – when Holly Downey is in the air you cannot help gasping at her skill and her strength.
This is a show with a very powerful environmental message – a brave thing to do at Christmas – but Bristol is a historic maritime city with a green heart, and it is hard to imagine a better venue for this marvellous, captivating, magical show.
Huge congratulations to all the creative team, led by director Miranda Cromwell, who describes The Little Mermaid as “a show made with love for Bristol, a city that has inspired and grown me as an artist.”
The Little Mermaid runs at Bristol Old Vic until 11th January – make a real effort to see it if you can .. you will regret missing it once it’s gone.
FC
Photographs by Johan Persson