It's all going swimmingly

Howard Ashman has been dead for 16 years, but Alan Menken still communes with his late writing partner.

"Oh, an incredible amount," Menken said of the man with whom he composed the music for "The Little Mermaid," the 1989 film that has been credited not only with launching Disney into its second era of classic animation, but also with revitalizing a long-dormant genre. Without "Mermaid," which grossed $222 million worldwide, there may have been no "Beauty and the Beast," no "Pocahontas," no "Shrek" 1, 2 or the Third -- or even computer-animation giant Pixar.

So Menken, 57, stays close to the memory of the man with whom he restarted it all.

"I commune with Howard in ways that I still scratch my head and don't really understand," said Menken. "I talk to him. He shows up in my dreams all the time."

The pair wrote seven songs for the 62-minute film, including "Under the Sea." That score is the building block for a new stage adaptation of "Mermaid" that launches in Denver this week for a high-stakes pre-Broadway workshop run.

Their songwriting collaboration, which began with "Little Shop of Horrors" in 1982 and included "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin," ended with Ashman's death from AIDS in 1991.

"I am still living out the career that he would have lived out," said Menken, whose eight Academy Awards in 15 nominations make for one of the best success ratios in Oscar history.

"He was the most talented musical theater voice of our generation," said Menken. "The saddest strain that runs through my life are those moments when I think what might have been; what Howard didn't get to experience. I want him to know how much I deeply, deeply appreciate where he left my life when he left it."

Disney asked Menken to revisit "Mermaid" as a stage adaptation more than five years ago. The request might be natural, but at the same time unthinkable.

It was not the first time Menken had been asked, as he puts it, "to protect Howard's legacy while simultaneously moving on from it."

Tim Rice was brought in to help him complete the "Aladdin" film and the "Beauty and the Beast" stage adaptation.

The "Mermaid" assignment was gratifying, Menken said, "but it was deep breaths, because you know it's going to be a big job with big expectations."

By then, his new lyricist was Glenn Slater, whom he calls "a fantastic match for Howard's style."

They have added 12 songs to the score. "And I honestly think if you didn't know the original songs, you wouldn't know where Howard's work leaves off and Glenn's begins," Menken said. "It's seamless."

To think, when Disney first proposed an animated take on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about a little girl coming of age and finding her voice, Menken had never even heard of it. "What can I say," he said. "I'm a boy."

At that time, Disney animation was so in the dumps that "Mermaid" was put together in a warehouse far off the "real" Disney lot. The songwriters toiled at Menken's Pennsylvania farm. When they brought Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg demos, the then-new Disney executive team flipped.

"We knew it was good, but we had no idea it would hit the zeitgeist," Menken said.

Ashman lived just long enough to see the film win Academy Awards for best score and best song ("Under the Sea").

"When we were at the Oscars, Howard said, 'We really need to talk when we get back to New York,' and I had no idea what it was about, because I had completely blocked out the possibility that he was HIV-positive," Menken said. "Back then that diagnosis was a total, complete death sentence. "

If Ashman had lived, Menken imagines he might be directing the stage version that will bow in Denver. The project meant collaborating not only with Slater on new songs but with book writer Doug Wright, who won a Tony for penning "I Am My Own Wife" and was nominated for "Grey Gardens."

Menken felt no trepidation in fleshing out characters like Ursula, King Triton, Flotsam, Jetsam , and Scuttle with a man best known for writing the true stories of a German transvestite in World War II, and relatives of Jackie Kennedy who had turned from socialites into recluses living in squalor.

"He's a total craftsman, an open and creative collaborator and a wonderful person," Menken said.

Wright was impressed, too.

"I think 'Mermaid' boasts one of the most tuneful, exuberant Broadway scores in recent memory," he said. "It only just happens that the score was written for an animated film."

Among the new songs is a comic tour de force for nemesis Ursula, who reminisces "about the good times when she had the power to completely dominate and ruin people's lives," Menken explained.

While Menken is thrilled with his new score, there's no telling how audiences will respond. Where there were once few expectations, now, Menken admits, "Disney is a big target," with four concurrent Broadway spectacles.

One thing he is sure of is that Ashman's presence will be with him in Denver. "Absolutely," Menken said. "I will definitely be talking to Howard on opening night."