Theatre review: Unfortunate

Like Wicked with more clit jokes, Robyn Grant, Daniel Foxx (book & lyrics) and Tim Gilvin's (music) Unfortunate tells a famous fairy tale from the point of the view of the villain. But Ursula the Sea Witch is quite specific to one particular telling of The Little Mermaid, so it's important to clarify that this is a parody musical, for legal reasons. Sorry, you'll have to wait a few more decades for her to come into the public domain and get immediately cast as a slasher movie killer. In the meantime Ursula (Shawna Hamic) is here to tell us how she escaped her apparent death at the end of the movie: Quite easily as it turns out, it's not like it was the first boatload of seamen she ever took to the chest. Yes, that's the Carry On level we're at, but contrary to the title we're fortunate in that this is Southwark Playhouse once again staging the best kind of musical silliness.

So we get a backstory in which Ursula, daughter of a toilet cleaner and target of bullies for her weight and tentacles, becomes the unlikely high school girlfriend of Triton (Thomas Lowe,) future king of the underwater world and focus of a lot of daddy issues that are absolutely referenced in the show.

But Triton's father has different ideas for who should be the next queen, so he frames Ursula for the murder of a sea cucumber and banishes her to the dark depths, where she becomes known as an evil witch. 20 years later, it's Triton who seeks her out again to help with his youngest daughter, who's become obsessed with the world above because of all the rubbish that humans have been throwing into the sea: Old copies of Cosmopolitan have given her an interest in Goop, while ancient statues have given her an interest in massive dicks. She does a song about it.

Ursula's plan is to expose her to heartbreak so she'll realise the human world is no better than her own, but Ariel (River Medway) and Eric (Jamie Mawson) are as dim and vapid as each other so things don't entirely go to plan. I say it's described as a parody largely for legal reasons, but the songs do often directly parody those from the film: As well as Ariel's I Want song about all the big dicks on land ("Take me on the beach, Take me on a boat, Ain't got a vagina, But I've got a throat,") I heard an excited gasp from the audience near me when it became clear Sebastian (Allie Dart) was going to sing to Eric about how he should get consent to Kiss The Girl. Sebastian has an Irish accent, obviously - "anything else would be offensive."

So it's a very silly spoof but Grant's production also feels the whole highly professional musical theatre package, from Abby Clarke's set, costumes and puppets (the fish with alarmingly human lips cracked me up,) to the ensemble's constant, slick costume changes. The fact that these costumes seem to consist of quite a bit of leather bondage wear is hardly the only queer thing about the show either. Triton's dad (Mawson) wants his son to marry the right person, and is possibly offering himself up as a candidate (weird, Jeremy Irons was in a completely different Disney film.) Ariel has another admirer in the female chef (Dart,) who's quite fond of anything that's fishy from the waist down.

When Ursula takes on the persona of a beautiful human temptress, Vanessa (Julian Capolei) has a 'tache. And the fact that Jack Gray operates the puppet of Eric's dog so has to bend over a lot might be gay fanservice as well, or that might just be me, who can tell? Utterly filthy, ridiculous but slickly professional with it, it's the kind of show that can on the one hand be built around messages of ecology and body positivity, and on the other feature exposition delivered through interpretative dance by the ghost of a cucumber. Unfortunate has been growing a reputation since it premiered in Edinburgh a few years ago, and this confident London premiere shows it's a well-deserved one.

Unfortunate by Robyn Grant, Daniel Foxx and Tim Gilvin is booking until the 17th of February at Southwark Playhouse Elephant; then continuing on tour to Salford, Liverpool, Aberdeen, Dartford, Bradford, Leicester, Birmingham, Peterborough, Oxford, Glasgow, Cardiff, Southend, Exeter, Bromley, Nottingham, Newcastle, Southampton and Wolverhampton.

Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.