Little Mermaid a Titanic Flop

The verdict on Disney's latest Broadway musical, The Little Mermaid, is grim. "Loved the shoes. Loathed the show," Ben Brantley of the New York Times says of the "merblades" the cast uses to glide across a stage "soaked in that sparkly garishness that only a very young child—or possibly a tackiness-worshiping drag queen—might find pretty."

Roller skates can't salvage this $15 million shipwreck, and the New York critics aren't alone in their scorn. "It should have made a great Broadway show," says the Chicago Tribune's Chris Jones. "It really didn't." The set flops, too: "It was plastic, plastic everywhere, enough to lead you to drink," opines the New York Post's Clive Barnes. His advice? "Run for the lifeboat." (More Broadway stories.)