Here’s my final piece in the Broadway-bound series on “The Little Mermaid,” which opens tonight.

A strike by stagehands pushed it back a month, but tonight, the Broadway adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” opens at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
With music by Westchester native Alan Menken and a cast that includes Lower Hudson Valley actors John Treacy Egan of Larchmont, Merwin Foard of North Salem and Arbender J. Robinson of Mount Vernon, this Broadway show has suburban roots.
The cast is led by Sierra Boggess, making her Broadway debut, and includes Sean Palmer as Prince Eric and Sherie Rene Scott as Ursula the sea witch. (Scott splits time between Manhattan and Putnam County.)
What to expect on Opening Night?
ALAN MENKEN, who wrote the animated feature on which the musical is based, has been working on the show for years. Tonight’s opening will interrupt a long-planned vacation. He’ll be at the Lunt-Fontanne tonight for the opening and then resume his vacation.
“My traditions are opening night notes to the cast and crew and my music people and production people and individual congratulations and the opening-night party,” he says, adding with a laugh: “Then I try, if possible, to not open a newspaper the next morning unless told it’s safe.
“We’ll just have a good time and celebrate the coming of this show,” says the New Rochelle native who now makes his home in northern Westchester.
Other traditions, he says, have been “pretty much clobbered by the logistics of this year,” and the strike that pushed the “Mermaid” opening back a month.
Traditionally, the cast would get the day off after the opening. That won’t happen, as tickets had already been sold for tomorrow’s performance.
“And (producer) Tom Schumacher likes to have a dinner for everyone and it’s been difficult to coordinate things since people have other commitments, a month after we were supposed to have opened,” Menken says.
Another thing will be different, the composer says. Copies of the cast album—which was recorded Dec. 16-19—might just be available at tonight’s opening. Traditionally, the show is recorded after opening, but as the sessions were booked well in advance, Disney went ahead and recorded it in December. Menken is one of the album’s lead producers.

SIERRA BOGGESS, who plays Princess Ariel, tonight takes part in her first Opening Night.
She played Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera” in Las Vegas but, as luck would have it, was double-cast in the role and didn’t go on that Opening Night. She did, however, take a bow, with the other double-cast Phantom.
She calls it her “sort of Opening Night.”
“I was there. I attended. I did all the hype and excitement and the press,” she says. “But I didn’t get to actually perform, which is one of the hardest things about being double-cast.”
Tonight is different.
“This is going to be simply amazing, because it’s just me,” she says with a giggle.
It’s big, she says, but she’s trying not to think of it too much.
“Otherwise, it becomes so overwhelming because it’s so exciting and there are so many interviews and so much hype,” she says.
“The safest place for me to be, and the most enjoyable place to be, is on stage. Nothing else matters and once I’m off stage, there’s a lot of stress and getting ready and finding just the right cast gifts.”
And it’s a big cast.
“You want to make sure you think about everyone as a person,” Boggess says. “There are so many fantastic people and there’s so much to say.”
If she feels like a princess on stage, she’ll feel more like one at the Roseland party after tonight’s performance.
She’ll wear a Calvin Klein gown that she’s had several fittings for and she’s borrowing jewelry from Verdura.
“They’ve made this even more special,” she gushes.
Will she be the last one to arrive at Roseland for the big shindig?
“However much time it takes for me to look my best after coming off stage is how much time it will take to get to the party,” she says, putting on her best mock-diva attitude.

MERWIN FOARD tonight marks his 13th Broadway show and his 10th opening night, having joined three shows mid-run. He plays the pilot of Prince Eric’s ship and is also in the ensemble.
Foard lives in Carmel and sends his daughters, Phoebe and Bailey, to North Salem schools.
Westchester audiences might recognize him from a gig at Mamaroneck’s Emelin Theater last winter and from Broadway work in such revivals as “Assassins,” “Sweeney Todd,” and “1776,” where he was a memorable Richard Henry Lee.
Foard jokes that he doesn’t really have Opening Night traditions “more than sweating bullets.”
“It’s really very easy,” he says. “Living with the commute on Metro-North, I just go easily through the day.”
Tonight, though, might be a memorable one for Foard as he’s in the running for the Gypsy Robe, a Broadway tradition that honors the cast member who has been in the most Broadway ensembles.
At 5 tonight, the cast will assemble and the Gypsy Robe—adorned with show logos from all of this season’s musicals—will be bestowed. It’s a big honor, one Foard has won twice—for “Assassins” and “La Cage Aux Folles.”
“It supports the lifestyle of the Broadway gypsy, (an ensemble member) who goes from show to show to show,” he says, adding: “It’s an unknown until Opening Night, so we’ll see.”
Superstitions?
“I make sure I know my first words, because I’m the first vocal that you hear at the top of the show as the pilot of that ship. You don’t need to mess that up,” he says with a laugh.
“I’ll kind of be going through my opening moves during the overture to be ready for when the spotlight hits me,” he says.
Memorable opening nights include “Beauty and the Beast” another Menken show, in 1994 at The Palace Theater.
“Coming into your dressing room, you couldn’t see the dressing table or even the chair, because it was so loaded up with amazing bouquets of flowers and huge packages from Disney and the producers,” he says. “That was the most jaw-dropping Opening Night.”
The most impressive gift, though, came from Foard’s wife, Rebecca, who—for Opening Night of “Sweeney Todd”—designed and stitched a huge cross-stitch of the dozen Broadway shows Foard had appeared in. As Foard loves crossword puzzles, the titles and composers of each show were fit together as a crossword-puzzle design.
It was framed and matted by a man in Carmel who said it was a one-time deal that couldn’t be modified after it was framed, Foard says.
Tonight, Foard starts what he hopes will be his next dozen shows—with “The Little Mermaid.”

JOHN TREACY EGAN, of Larchmont, made his Broadway debut in “Jekyll and Hyde” nearly 11 years ago and played three roles in “The Producers,” including Max Bialystock. He plays the cleaver-wielding Chef Louis in “The Little Mermaid.”
Tonight is his second Opening Night on Broadway, but he’s not big on traditions.
“I just try to show up on time,” he deadpans.
He’s looking forward to the Gypsy Robe presentation.
“It’s a great tradition. Everybody touches the robe,” he says. “And it looks like it’ll be either Merwin or Adrian Bailey.”
Egan says he’s working on an Opening Night gift idea with Foard: “Something that we’ll do as a cast down the road.”
“At my age, you go ‘I don’t really need another pen,’” he says with a laugh. “You want to give something memorable or useful.”

ARBENDER J. ROBINSON is a member of the ensemble, and plays one of the tap-dancing seagulls in the Act 2 opening number, “Positoovity.”
The Chicago native now calls Mount Vernon home.
“Mermaid” is his second Broadway show—he appeared in “Hairspray”—but tonight is his first big Opening Night.
“I’ve only done regional theater up until this point, so this is a little different for me. In regional theater, you rehearse a show for two weeks, you throw a show up very quickly, you have a quick party after the show and you’re doing the same thing again the next day.
“I have no idea what to expect,” he says in a break between two Sunday shows. “I’m like this big wide-eyed kid with his first original show going to a big Opening Night.”
Since Opening Night is all about presents, Robinson has been working on his. He’ll give co-workers grab-bags with all things “Mermaid” inside. Echoing a lyric, he calls them “whosits and whatsits galore.”

PHOTOS: Alan Menken by Rory Glaeseman of The Journal News; Sierra Boggess, John Treacy Egan, Merwin Foard and Arbender J. Robinson by Joan Marcus.