The Little Mermaid, Riverside Studios, review All the best children's stories contain an undercurrent of adult darkness, but Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid is bleaker than most. The story of the teenage mermaid who saves a prince from drowning and endures agonies to be near him, only to dissolve into sea-foam when he marries a human princess, was so harrowing that Andersen revised his original tragic ending with a redemptive coda. The offspring of Anderson's tale are legion, ranging from Dvorak's opera, Rusalka, to Disney's relentlessly upbeat animation. The latest reinterpretation, by David Shopland and Callum Hughes of the young theatre company Blind Tiger, explores the parallels between the Little Mermaid's story of unrequited love and her creator's troubled emotional life. Anderson, a poor boy from the provinces, was taken up by a wealthy benefactor, Jonas Collin, and became part of the Collin family, forming a deep attchement to Collin's son, Edvard. Around the time he was composing The Little Mermaid, he wrote to Edvard that "my sentiments for you are those of a woman." But his feelings were not reciprocated. Shopland's production weaves together narratives of an older Andersen (James Earl Adair) recounting the story of The Little Mermaid to a waif-like 15-year-old girl (Jennifer Johnson), with flashbacks to his awkward younger self as he experienced the first pangs of authorship and unrequited love. Fay Shortall's miminal set makes ingenious use of a desk, a piano and a quantity of white drapery to represent everything from the Collin household to the depths of the sea and the Royal palace. Claire Sharpe is a nubile Mermaid, more than ready to explore the earthly delights of love in her tight blue satin fishtail and funky purple hair. Stu Mansell, doubling the roles of Edvard and the Prince, is more persuasive as the stolid object of Andersen's passion than as a romantic lead, while Erla Brynjarsdottir brings a supple versatility to a quartet of roles, including Edvard's sensible wife and an alarmingly sexy Sea Witch. There is a delightful improvisatory quality to this production, in which the cast provide their own soundtrack on flute, guitar and strings. More likely to appeal to an audience who grew up with the original narrative, rather than the Disney cartoon, it features a couple of memorably touching performances: Anthony Pinnick is beautifully awkward as the young Andersen, while Jennifer Johnson is hauting as a feisty waif with an unexpected talent for earthy comedy. Until 12 January 2014. Tickets: 020 8237 1111; riversidestudios.co.uk