Mermaid is a very modern tail

When theatre director Polly Teale first discovered Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, she “sat and sobbed on the settee.”

“It was back in the days when we had vinyl records,” Polly adds. “I had a version recorded by Charlie Chester. Remember him? He had a gorgeous, gravelly voice. I listened to the disc over and over. I suppose I was eight or nine.”

Andersen’s fairytale is the story of a young mermaid who wants to give up her life in the sea, become a human, and gain the love of a handsome prince. But there’s someone willing to take advantage of her sweet dream and turn it sour: a sea witch sells her a potion that gives her human legs, but in exchange for her tongue.

“We try to protect our children from anything that’s dark or frightening, but actually they love the gruesome bits in stories,” says Polly.

“Childhood is a time of intense feeling. I think most children would identify with the idea of losing your voice and not being able to speak. It’s like losing part of your soul.

“The Little Mermaid is a coming-of-age story; it’s about puberty and what happens to a girl as she becomes a woman. Even at the age of eight, to me there was something in this idea that if you had your tongue cut out, you would have no way of expressing your love. That really resonated with me.”

The story has continued to resonate ever since and Polly has now written and directed her own version for Oxford Playhouse resident company Shared Experience. Shortening the title to Mermaid and “plundering Hans Christian Andersen’s tale for its dark, erotic, mythic power,” as she puts it, Polly has reset the story in the 21st century. Does that mean the world of social media?

“Exactly so. Our version begins in the bedroom of a 13-year-old girl called Blue, who discovers all her friends are at a party, but she hasn’t been invited. She realises this from messages that come up on Instagram and Facebook.

“I was very interested in how Andersen’s story relates to the modern world. I think young women – and probably this applies to boys as well – get this very narrow idea of what it is to be beautiful. I’ve got a 14-year-old daughter and girls of her age are constantly looking at themselves, and asking: ‘Should I change my Facebook picture?’ “As a result, I’m very much looking at the story through the prism of the modern world: the amount of plastic surgery that’s being done is something like five times as much as five years ago. Quite literally, women are having bits of themselves removed, so this image of someone having their tongue cut out doesn’t seem that far-fetched.”

All of which makes me wonder: do Polly and her husband (fellow theatre director Ian Rickson) monitor what their own daughter views online?

“A little bit. I think it’s important that children have privacy and that you shouldn’t always be looking over their shoulders. I don’t set myself up as an expert, but I think the best way of dealing with it is to make sure you keep talking to your children about what they’re viewing and what can be dangerous.”

But all that’s in the future as the 16-year-old mermaid first rises to the surface from her underwater home.

“It was great fun imagining the mermaid world,” Polly says. “It’s not until they come up, put their heads out of the water and see our world that the mermaids even realise they can be seen by other people.”

The production is designed to reflect not only the modern human world, but life underwater. A choir of women has been recruited to create an unearthly musical landscape, designed to reflect the magical realm of mermaids.

“We’ve worked a lot with water,” Polly says, “And that is a very powerful, evocative element of the production. You should really believe that there is water, and that the mermaids are swimming.”

Mermaid
Oxford Playhouse
May 19-23
Tickets: 01865 305305 or oxfordplayhouse.com