"Unfortunate: The Untold Story Of Ursula the Sea Witch: The Musical Parody"

Nottingham Theatre Royal.

Most of us have seen the Disney film and/or musical "The Little Mermaid" where the baddie of the piece is Ursula, The Sea Witch when she steals Ariel, the Little Mermaid's beautiful voice in exchange for giving her legs so that she can live on land, and meet her Prince Charming. In this musical, Ursula gives her take on what really happened all those years ago under the sea.

Shawna Hamic leads the cast as Ursula who spills all in this tell-all tale of sex, sorcery and suckers; definitely not one for the kids, but deliciously entertaining for the adults! I've not seen Shawna before, either on stage or on TV, which has been my loss completely. Shawna, as Ursula, is big bad and beautiful and has a voice, and persona to match. If Tuesday night's audience weren't fans before the show, they left massive fans, like myself.

Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK star River Medway is Ariel. River is another new name to me, even though I dip in and out of Rupaul's Drag Race. This is my kind of Ariel because of the comedy side of Disney's mermaid. River has a brilliant voice and I can now confess that I am a converted River Medway fan. Drag is such a specialised art form, as is the comedy that accompanies a Drag persona, and musicals like this highlight the talent required to be successful in this art form.

Thomas Lowe plays Triton who looked familiar to me and after a bit of digging I found out that he was in a nineties four piece boy band called North and South, whose biggest hit was called "I'm A Man Not A Boy" back in 1997, a single that I have in my music collection. All of the cast are perfect for this show, but what really sticks out is Thomas's incredible voice. Two songs really show the broadness of Thomas's vocal range, "Sucking On You" and "To Be King". The first you get to hear the more rockier sound to his voice, the latter is pure theatre, both songs are full of power.

Allie Dart plays Sebastian, and the main difference is the voice. Gone is the Jamaican brogue and in its' place is a gentle Irish accent. Allie also plays  the chef at the start of the second act and we get to see a really funny scene to the song "Les Poissons", and done in a French accent.

Jamie Mawson plays Prince Eric, the object of Ariel's affections. Wonderfully toffee nosed with an added dollop of Hooray Henry thrown in. A little bit Tim Nice But Dim, and shallow is not just a water depth with this Eric! None, bar one of this cast I've seen previously so have nothing to gauge any of them by, but what I can tell with Jamie is that he has a flair for playing comedy.

Julian Capolei plays Grimsby and Julian's comedy bones really show as he transforms into Vanessa, the character who is created to tempt Prince Eric from Ariel. Julian is the actor who I have seen previously when he was in "Peter Pan" at Derby Theatre, and also in "Tommy" at the Nottingham Playhouse, if I remember correctly.

Corrina Buchan, Jack Gray, Jamie McKillop and Milly Willows make up the ensemble, who also operate the underwater puppets.

Written and directed by Robyn Grant. It's wonderfully camp throughout with massive measures of crudity. It's bold and brash and a breath of fresh air in the theatre. It certainly deserved the standing ovation given at the end.

Daniel Foxx, Tim Gilvin and Robyn Grant provides the music, with arrangements and orchestrations by Tim Gilvin. Additional orchestrations and music production by Nikki Davison and Joe Davison.  It wasn't until earlier on Tuesday morning that I actually discovered that the soundtrack to this musical had only just been recorded, by this very same cast, so I just had to download it for myself. The music covers several genres, and some of the songs echo the original Disney songs like "Kiss The Girl", now renamed "Ask the Girl" and you'll easily spot the comparison with "Part Of Your World", which has slightly more blue lyrics.

Musical Director is Arlene McNaught.

The musical features set, costume and puppet design by Abby Clarke. The puppets are created by Aled Williams. The costumes are incredible, especially the one for Ursula.

Choreography by Melody Sinclair enhanced the comedy of the show, and I loved the "Can Can" section.

Lighting design by Adam King was exciting and extremely colourful, the sort of lighting design that adds power and punch to a production.

Sound design by Oscar Thompson and Will Thompson. Now this is the only thing that I thought could be tweaked ever so slightly. It was opening night so tweaks may be tweaked to make the sound on some mics clearer. Some of the lyrics to the music were lost on me because I couldn't hear the words clear enough. This may also be the speed of some of the songs, especially the more "rappy" songs. Fortunately I had only just listened to the soundtrack earlier, so knew where the funny lines were and still got all the comedy from the songs on stage.

The make-up design is by Maya Lewis and Christina Semertzaki, and are superb.

This really is a musical that you need to see to get the maximum fun from, and no amount of words from me will ever do a show like this justice because it is so different. It has the ability to offend, which is half the fun of it anyway for me, but as far as I could tell there was no offence taken by anyone, obviously because this audience had a wicked sense of humour. It would be unfortunate for you though if you didn't manage to get hold of a ticket for this show.

"Unfortunate" has an age restriction of 16+ as it contains strong language, partial nudity, scenes of a sexual nature and flashing lights, and is at the Nottingham Theatre Royal until Saturday 29 June. Go on, take the plunge and discover what really happened under the sea. No cucumbers were harmed during this show. Or were they?