The Little Mermaid Pantomime Script Spotlight
Shell yeah, this one's a keeper!
The Little Mermaid is a title audiences arrive already fond of, but many of whom haven’t seen given the panto treatment. In this script Dame Beluga, the Royal Singing Teacher, has devoted her entire career to saving the wails, Lobster Theodore holds more honorary titles than anyone has time to listen to, and Ariel's longing for the surface incorporates an unexpected pastiche of that cue card scene in Love Actually. Add in the villain, Octavia, and her Marvel obsessed hench-fish, and you have an up-and-coming panto title that gives a tidal wave of laughter.
Synopsis
Deep beneath the ocean, in the underwater kingdom of the Coral, Princess Ariel has an extraordinary voice and a fascination with the world above the waves that her mother, Queen Marina, cannot bring herself to share. When a storm sends Prince Evan's ship into trouble, Ariel surfaces to rescue him, and the two share a song on the shore, beginning something neither of them quite knows what to do with.
Back underwater, Ariel's aunt Octavia has been watching. A sea-witch with her eye on Marina's trident and her ear on Ariel's voice, Octavia offers a bargain: legs, in exchange for the singing. Ariel takes the deal. What follows involves a stolen voice that keeps escaping to the wrong people, a wedding that very much should not happen, and a finale in which two kingdoms finally learn to live together without fear.
This panto script is making a splash!
Straight from the Script
Prince Evan has just been pulled from a shipwreck and washed ashore. His father, King Godfrey, is not impressed:
King Godfrey: 'You look like you've been dragged through the ocean.'
Prince Evan: 'I have been dragged through the ocean.'
King Godfrey: 'Well, don't do it again!'
Casting The Little Mermaid: Who this script suits
With 12 principal characters and five supporting roles, The Little Mermaid is one of our medium cast scripts, and the parts are well spread. Ariel and Evan carry the romantic plot, Octavia and her henchmen Slip and Slap carry the comic villain thread, and Dame Beluga, Scampi, Queen Marina and Lobster Theodore supply laughs and heart throughout. The Spirit of the Sea opens and closes scenes in rhyming verse, which suits a confident performer who enjoys a direct relationship with the audience.
The Ensemble plays mermaids, sailors, sea creatures, guards and jellyfish across both acts, and the underwater scenes leave plenty of room for costume and staging invention. The Act Two voice-swapping sequence, where Ariel's recovered voice keeps attaching itself to the wrong character, asks for good comic timing from the whole company. It is among our unusual pantomime scripts, which gives a group something specific to advertise.
Four of the five supporting roles arrive together. Persil, Lenor, Daz and Own Brand are Ariel's sisters, daughters of Queen Marina, and they work as a unit in both acts, which makes them a natural home for four members who want a name and a costume without carrying a plot. Annette, the fifth, turns up in Act Two with a fishing net and a name that explains itself. That is five people you can cast from the middle of your society rather than the top of it.
The voice-passing routine is the thing to understand before you promise it to anybody. Ariel's voice escapes the shell and moves between characters as a spotlight moves with it, and the way it works is that the actor playing Ariel speaks every line from offstage while each character on stage lip-syncs in turn. You can preset the spotlights from above and give the cast marks to stand on, or flick a follow-spot between them. Either way it is a lighting rehearsal as much as a comedy one.
The cue card scene wants the same kind of forethought. Ariel holds up hand-lettered cards to Evan while music underscores it, and the only thing that ruins it is cards nobody past row six can read. Beyond those two sequences the show is kind to a scenic team. Four full sets carry six full-stage scenes, since the Royal Palace does duty again dressed for the wedding and the underwater kingdom does the same, and the sea plays in front of the tabs as happily as it does on an open stage.
If the Spirit of the Sea is the part that appeals to you, our Alice in Wonderland goes considerably further and hands the whole show to a narrator in rhyme, since the Cheshire Cat carries the story from beginning to end in verse.
Request your free Perusal Script
If you'd like to read our Little Mermaid script in full before you decide, request a free Perusal Script and we'll send it over. Alternatively, visit The Little Mermaid script page for the character list and running time. The All Scripts page has every other title, and our home page has the rest of the site.