Colony Middle School dives in with ambitious production

PALMER — “The Little Mermaid” may be an iconic Disney animated classic, but when Colony Middle School teachers Ben Wargo and Tobias Lambert announced the school would perform a musical production of the story, they were met with more than a few students asking, “The Little Who?”

“I would say there were a good dozen or so of them who had never seen the film,” said Lambert, music director for the CMS production of “The Little Mermaid Jr.”

“Yeah, it’s more our generation, I think,” added Wargo, the director. “The Disney film came out in ’89, so a lot of the kids hadn’t seen it before they auditioned for this.”

It didn’t take them long to fall in love with the story, though, Lambert and Wargo said. And as one of the middle school’s most ambitious productions ever, there’s a lot to love.

“The Little Mermaid Jr.” boasts a cast of about 40 performers and another 20 or so support crew, Wargo said. That includes CMS students and younger children from Finger Lake Elementary school who fill out many complementary roles.

“The main cast is mostly the middle school kids,” he said. “The elementary kids fill out the sea creatures and things like that.”

Another ambitious factor is the musical’s length — about 1 hour, 40 minutes, which is a long performance for that level, Wargo and Lambert said. Managing a large cast of mostly middle and elementary school students takes some effort.

“Yeah, it took a couple of rehearsals to kind of get them to gel together a little bit,” Lambert said. “But since we’ve started full dress rehearsals, they interact pretty well together.”

That was evident last weekend when the show opened to a sold-out room at Colony Middle School. “The Little Mermaid Jr.” has one more weekend of performances, tonight and Saturday at 7 p.m.

Along with all the recognizable songs from the original movie, the local cast also performs several new songs that were added with the story was adapted for the Broadway stage, Lambert said. Getting a large group that included many who had never sung or danced was another hurdle, and the musical also includes 19 set changes in 20 scenes.

But it’s the performances that stand out, Wargo said. “The Little Mermaid Jr.” enjoys several outstanding actors in its leading roles, he said.

There are the main characters Ariel (played by seventh-grader Hannah Decker) and Eric (played by Daniel Bass, eighth grade).

Eighth-grader Lunia Oriol plays the villain, the evil octopus Ursula. The part wasn’t much of a stretch for her, Wargo said, as she has played the villain in CMS productions for the past three years.

“She’s just great,” he said of Oriol’s performance, which takes an ensemble to pull off. “She’s the main body of Ursula and she has six tentacles, so she has four people doing her tentacles. They have a good time. She’s good.”

Her evil eel henchmen Flotsam and Jetsam were fan favorites in the movie, and don’t disappoint on the CMS stage either, Wargo said. Played by Mariah Fry (Flotsam) and Sydney Albrecht (Jetsam), the pair is wonderfully evil, he said.

“They’re more of the slithery, slimy relief,” he said. “I know other junior productions tend to get little kids to play Flotsam and Jetsam, but they’re not little kids just flopping around. They’re evil.”

Of course, no “Little Mermaid” version would be complete without the Rastafarian-talking Jamaican crab, Sebastian. That role is played to perfection by eighth-grader Luke Johnson, Wargo said.

“Oh, we have a great Sebastian,” he said. “He’s short and he’s got the accent down. I don’t think we had to direct him that much. Naturally, he’s just good.”

That accent took some work, Lambert said. “At first, he had more of an Irish-style accent.”

Although this weekend’s shows are nearly sold out at $5 a ticket, there may be a few seats available at the door, Wargo and Lambert said — but no promises.

Contact reporter Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.