Sick of living out their seabound lives as congenital people pleasers, five mermaids decide to go landside to attend a self-help retreat on a tropical island, hosted by hot (human) guy, Josh. They arrive to find that Josh hasn’t had the manners to meet them – but he has left them his self-help manual. Not quite the dreamboat support they sought but they decide it will have to do. Cue a series of confessional exercises, accompanied by much flapping of fins, tossing of hair and uncomfortable self-reflection. Turns out these mermaids all have secrets they’d rather not share with their avowedly best friends.

‘Tall Tails’ from Red Kitchen Collective is swimming in potential. These mermaids are suitably sparkly and bedecked with enough shells to make Ariel proud. They’re also smart, sassy and funny. The whip quick dialogue (‘frenemies and anemones’) dashes along, leaping from politics to self-help parodies to wry quips about the perils of being twenty-something year old (mer)women via oil spills and the Gulf of Mexico, with plenty of puns along the way. The story surfs alongside, occasionally submerged but the final reveal makes smart use of the third wall to enfold us all in the objectification that these mermaids were seeking to escape in the first place.

This production would benefit from a director to help vary the movement and the distribution of people on stage a little more effectively. And if the script were wrung out a little more to sharpen the focus on the feisty feminist backbone of the story, that would make this production all the more shipshape. But the costumes are impressive (Nikola Carouso), the cast were clearly having a ball and there are moments in here – some of the one liners, the collective seal-style barks of approval – of perfectly timed comedic magic.

‘Tall Tails‘ is at the Space @ Surgeon’s Hall – Theatre 2 until Sat 9 Aug 2025 at 19:45