Friday, May 16, 2008

Special on the road Edition! - The Little Mermaid

As I type this post (and the one before it), I'm sitting in an airport terminal, weathering a delay in my flight to see my fiancé on his home turf. Now, I love to travel, especially by plane, although a good car trip is fun, too. And I always try to have a new CD or two to listen to during the flight. Luckily for me, I hit the jackpot at my favorite library (which I hadn't been able to visit for a couple of monthe, which is probably why I was able to find so many CDs I hadn't seen there before), and I was able to check out a few OCRs that I'd been meaning to listen to. The only one I've gotten to listen to so far is the Broadway version of The Little Mermaid. And from what I've listened to so far, I like it, although I keep getting all misty-eyed from nostalgia. The movie came out right when I was starting to retain movies, and my younger sister fell in love with it so completely that my older sister can quote the entire movie word-for-word from how often she watched it.
Anyway, the real reason I'm posting this is due to Sherie Renee Scott, who plays Ursula. Now, the only other thing I really know her from is the musical of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (great show, btw. I love the songs, and the script is pretty funny, too), but her performance here is very different from what she did there (completely different characters, so it makes sense). But what really struck me is how much she reminded me of the Patti LaPone in Master Class parody from Forbidden Broadway Strikes Back! that it's uncanny. Since I'm nowhere near my CD collection, I can't confirm this, but I'm fairly certain that it was Christine Pedi who did that, but who knows? Plenty of theater folks have gotten their start in Forbidden Broadway (including Jason Alexander), so maybe Ms. Scott did, too. Time to seek out some interviews to see if she says what her inspiration for the part was, since it definitely was not Pat Carroll.

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