Charlotte Church transforms from Voice of an Angel to Voice of an Angel Fish – well, Mermaid – in this family show that takes an eco theme for a children’s show and gives it high production values.
It also, of course, has extremely strong singing from Church and also from the other vocalists who meld styles from operatic to funk, ballad to haunting torch song. In fact, her contribution is less than some of the others in the ensemble.
The show was commissioned for the Festival of Voice, and story and music was co-written by Church, Jonathan Powell and the composer Sion Trefor. The result is rather mixture of a show combining the feel of a children’s show with a rather difficult to follow narrative. This is not only as a result of some of the operatic-style singing, but the lyrics being possibly over poetic. This a personal tale of isolation, loneliness, love, heartbreak but ultimate hope wrapped in a sort of transcendental green, field good trippie experience. It is all within a new twist on innocent abroad discovers how horrible the world is. Thus Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid is turned into an allegory for today.
Here the innocent is the last of her species, a mermaid ,who is sent to live with the humans. She has already made contact with man (and a specific man) who she saves from drowning. On land she meet shim again and is smitten by him. However, when she finds disillusionment on dry land and returns to the sea they have another less pleasant encounter.
It is the lavish costumes, video projections, Bruce Guthrie’s production and Francis O’Connor’s gloriously simple but dazzling set gorgeously lit by Rick Fisher that transform the Weston Studio into an atmospheric underwater world.
There are moments where I had a little giggle such as our super star singer discovering how to make sounds that are, understandably, more whale song than Pie Jesu. The ending is also extremely uplifting in a somewhat spaced-out Mother Earth sort of way. Yet it was an intriguing delight to see this latest episode in the soap-opera-defying Charlotte Church artistic (and everything else!) life journey. This show will no doubt be developed further and make sharper and clearer in the telling and surely will become a well-traveled, often presented new work.