Mermaids Have No Tears. Barons Court Theatre.

“Mermaids have no tears, and therefore they suffer more”, Hans Christian Anderson says in The Little Mermaid. The sea creature’s invisible torment is often seen as a metaphor for the fairy tale writer’s inability to express his queer identity. She gives up her identity, family, and voice to be with someone she loves, who ultimately loves someone else. The love triangle reflects Andersen’s intense, lifelong attachment to family friend Edvard Collin, who married and left Andersen emotionally devastated. His stories consistently explore quiet suffering and hidden emotional anguish.

Ellis Stump’s relentlessly energetic absurdist comedy Mermaids Have No Tears sets a queer love triangle against the backdrop of an annual mermaid parade in Coney Island. The piece boasts some zinging one-liners, but the pace is so frantic, and the narrative so overcrowded, that it is difficult to figure out what Stump is trying to tell us or the connection she wants to draw with Hans Christian Anderson.

Fyn (Everleigh Brenner, dark and brooding) is an old-money, non-binary nepo baby with addiction problems and a gruesome, cruel, wealthy father. They pass out at the parade, only to awake in the arms of Tik-Tok influencer Morgan (Olivia von Opel channels over-privileged clueless ditziness), who claims she is a 300-year-old mermaid. “Mortals surround us,” says Morgan, who actually hails from Florida and has reactionary, homophobic Republican parents. The duo eye each other up with barely concealed lust and make a beeline for Fyn’s apartment.

Add Wade (Jack Flammiger delivers the best of the evening’s performances), a licentious, polyamorous university lecturer in Literature and Mythology (dressed as an orange fish) who secretly loves Fyn. We also hear recordings of the protagonists’ parents, a Greek chorus of judgemental disapproval criticising their children’s choices.

Fast forward a year. Fyn and Morgan have opened up their now rocky relationship and the latter has been “dabbling with dicking”, specifically with Wade, who still loves Fyn. Morgan gets pregnant during an intense bout of “forbidden Danish lover role-play”. But having a kid is not like playing sea creatures: “you can’t be a mum with a tail”, Fyn tells their girlfriend between popping pills and necking scotch.

Should Morgan, whose education consists of being “taught to gift shop” and cannot cry as a result of her “internalised shame and antidepressants”, risk having a baby? Should a drunken Fyn, who has just bought a gun at Walmart, come out to their oil tycoon father? Should Wade, now dressed in a fetching green sequin dress, confess his hidden love for Fyn? Anticipates twists, turns, and sparks on this year’s parade.

An awful lot is going on in Mermaids Have No Tears. On top of a love triangle, we get a coming-of-age vibe, nods to the Disney cartoon, a dig at Trumpian politics, a comment on the climate crisis, and a generalised excursion around queer Gen Z preoccupations. These are all valid topics, but Stump struggles to bring the strands together or make an obvious point. Julia Sopher’s frenetic direction aims at screwball madcap. One yearns she would slow down, add in some shade, and take a beat occasionally.  Too many of Stump’s funniest lines get lost in the mad rush, leaving this something of an exercise in style over substance.

Writer:   Ellis Stump

Director:   Julia Sopher