FEMINIST retellings of fairytales are nothing new. But Polly Teale manages to bring enough energy to Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid to make its familiarity feel strange and beautiful in this new Shared Experience production.

It’s set in a run-down seaside town in the present day, where teenager Blue (Natalie Gavin) is being ostracised at school for wearing second-hand trainers and is under strain at home due to her father losing his job and turning to drink.

She deals with these difficulties by writing a story about a Little Mermaid (Sarah Twomey), who has her own struggles with growing up and self-consciousness.

An ever-present figure on stage, Blue reads narratives and fuses sentences with the Mermaid and her gently undulating sisters as reality and metaphor start to bleed together.

Another constant presence is a community choir that creates the mermaids’ haunting, wordless songs as well as being an audience to Blue’s narration. Swaying as if buoyed by waves, the teenage girls sit at the side of a stage that Tom Piper has designed to resemble a wooden pier.

It’s a construction under which the mermaids swim in cream-coloured slips, their lithe movements alone creating the illusion of tails.

Performing their actions in slow motion and frequently breaking into handsprings and somersaults, the sense of Liz Ranken’s graceful choreography being performed underwater is enhanced by walls covered in burnished mirrors.

The staging and choreography show an admirable ambition but that can become problematic when it connects with Teale’s script. This is a play that covers everything — from “poverty Britain” to the war in Iraq and from the royal family to body image — and there are times when this makes Mermaid feel as densely immersive as water and you crave to strip it back to just a handful of themes.

Tours until May 23 2015, details:

sharedexperience.org.uk