Review roundup

The Little Mermaid
Consider the reviews this show racked up--take a look at the filleting Ben Brantley gave it--I was expecting something along the lines of Shamu's Super High-Kicking Spectacular at Sea World. After seeing it, I'll just say: Leave the guppy alone. OK, no more fish references. But really, I didn't see anything so egregiously awful to warrant the thrashing the show received. No, there's nothing visually stunning like "The Lion King," the songs added to the production are dull to cloying, the scenery is bit garish -- oh dear, I'm doing it, too. OK, it's really NOT a great show, I'm afraid. Charming nostalgia, yes, and fun actors in broad parts, yet nothing to elevate it above a really good theme park production. But I had fun, the same way I have fun whenever I catch "King Ralph" on basic cable. And the tourists lapped it up. Having never seen "Beauty and the Beast," I had never seen the inside of the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre until seeing this show. I have a feeling the theatre is going to be uncharted waters, er, territory for a lot of New Yorkers for several years now, too.

August: Osage County
A tonic to crabs in every way. Reviewers, friends and amateur critics had talked up this new work by Tracy Letts up so much that I was afraid I couldn't help but be disappointed. Well, I wasn't. It's a brilliant dark comedy, wonderfully constructed from beginning to end acted by what is sure to be the finest ensemble onstage this season -- and that's high praise, considering my thoughts on "The Seafarer" and "The Homecoming." The insane fire from Deanna Dunagan and Amy Morton (a killer Nurse Ratched earlier this century) as a drug-addled battle ax and her mini-me-in-training fuel this three-and-a-half-hour marathon without a single sputter. Francis Guinan, playing Uncle Charlie, the most normal and grounded member of the clan, turns a rambling recitation of grace into a hilarious monologue. And I swear that I went to church with Rondi Reed's Aunt Mattie Fae growing up. If I had any quibble with this show, it's that Letts made it fit just a little too perfectly. It's OK to have a superfluous character or two. Just ask anyone who's ever played the brother in "A Moon for the Misbegotten."

Jerry Springer: The Opera
Oh, Linda Balgord. You may have turned Queen Elizabeth into Cruella de Vil last season, but all is forgiven after hearing your wonderfully shrill soprano shreik out every vulgarity thinkable onstage at Carnegie Hall. There's something oddly thrilling about seeing the lowest form of entertainment melded into some sort of Orff-ian masterwork--complete with a Klansmen chorus line, something to be topped only if someone invented a NASCAR engine that roared Prokofiev. Well, thrilling for the first two hours at least, after which the conceit started to wear a bit thin and the allegory began to bloat. But that's what concert stagings are for, yes? Here's hoping a leaner version of this finds a permanent home in New York at some point in time. A note about the Catholic protestors outside: I had intended to give a little freedom of expression blast here, but honestly, the withered showing the protesters had was so sad, I don't have the heart. Besides, one of them was even kind of cute.