https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/arts/2024-06-15/review-disneys-frozen/

Review: Disney’s Frozen

By Richard Whittaker, June 15, 2024, 4:35pm, All Over Creation

Disney built a snowman, and it snowballed into a mountain. Frozen hasn’t just spawned a cinematic sequel (with a second on the way), it’s also covered the land with magic in the touring production of the Broadway show, Disney’s Frozen.

As the touring production slides into Austin’s Bass Concert Hall as part of the early Summer section of the Broadway in Austin programming, there was no hint of ice anywhere except in the frosés sold in the upper bar. Yet there was Arendelle, the fantasy Scandinavian kingdom, the place where an act of true love saves the Ice Queen, Elsa, and brings her closer than ever to her sister, Anna.

There’s no mistaking, more than a decade after the movie, Frozen is a cultural landmark. Part of Disney's modern princess era that began with The Princess and the Frog, tumbled into Tangled, headed to the Highlands for Brave, and then crossed oceans with Moana, it has a certain magic that few movies ever reach. Just stand in a crowd at Disneyland and wait for Elsa to appear: It’s a reaction only ever eclipsed by the mouse himself.

[inset-1-right]However, it’s always a tale of two sisters and the love they share, and that’s captured perfectly on stage. Belinda Allyn (the tour’s former Queen Iduna, filling in for Lauren Nicole Chapman for the Austin dates) catches all of Anna’s social awkwardness and excited clumsiness, adding a certain randy charm to her forthright goodheartedness. Meanwhile Caroline Bowman has become the stage Elsa, a conflicted storm of emotions whose path to accepting herself proves she’s not the monster she fears she is.

Of course, that also demands an excellent young Anna and Elsa for the opening scenes, and there are no concerns there. On Wednesday’s performance, Avelyn Lena Choi personified all of Elsa’s older sister guilt, while Emma Origenes was a burst of raw charisma and fun as Anna. Her selling of “Hang in there, Joan,” provided one of the night’s first real gutbuster laughs.

Broadway adaptations of Disney seemingly inevitably add more musical numbers, which is quite something for Frozen since it was already the most song-heavy of its animated features. Fortunately, there’s creative continuity, as the stage version comes with a book by original scriptwriter Jennifer Lee, and music by original composers Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. However, this reinvention also allows for some rewriting of the narrative. That’s fitting, since the film was the feature that Disney toyed with the longest. Walt himself was talking about an adaptation of The Snow Queen before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released in 1937, and the version that would become Frozen was in stop-start development from the Disney Renaissance of the 1980s.

Some of those changes are to in part because there are limits to transferring the film’s visual magic to the stage (Marshmallow, you were missed!), so now the adorable trolls are more like the Huldufólk, the hidden folk of Icelandic myth. Many of those changes revolve around Elsa, and while much has been written about Bowman’s perfect vocal performance, it’s the physical change between the heavy-cloaked and repressed Elsa and her liberated self that shows why she has made the part her own since the tour’s inception. If anyone thought she had big snowshoes to fill for Idina Manzell’s Oscar-worthy performance onscreen, you have to feel sorry for whoever takes over from her compassionate, scared, powerful interpretation of the part.

Those changes also allow for a little bit of course-correction. Somewhere along the way, someone at Disney realized that profit-minded shopkeeper Wandering Oaken had become a fan favorite from his tiny scene. Now he’s the host of the quite excellent dinner theatre production “Arendelle: A Frozen Dining Adventure” on the Disney Wish cruise liner. In this production Jack Brewer’s wonderfully pantomime-y Oaken provides some of the evening’s biggest laughs and some crowd call-and-response as the second act opens. He even gets a whole new song-and-dance number, "Hygge," a surprisingly bawdy routine in the sauna involving the entire ensemble as Oaken's family with towels and birch whisks. (Don’t panic, parents, there’s nothing too risqué for your kids, and mostly the smalls near me were just giggling about bums.) It even fits within the show, since snowman Olaf’s big number, “In Summer,” already opened the door to vaudeville.

Not every change is for the better, and ice seller Kristoff seems a slighter character than in the film. Nicholas Edwards (who understudied for the part in Broadway) is entertaining, but everyone’s favorite square-footed woods-tinkler has lost some of his grumpy, clumpy charm in the transition (and while we’re on that topic, the original version of “Fixer Upper” desperately needs to be put back as it was).

Yet the overall show brings exactly the scale of magic, wonder, and fun that may turn a generation of kids into theatregoers. Sven the reindeer (Colin Baja in an elaborate stilted costume) and ditsy snowman Olaf (on-stage puppeteer Jeremy Davis) prove that Disney has still learned all the right lessons from The Lion King about bringing animated characters to the real world. Oh, and the size of that world. There could barely have been a spare square inch in the wings of the Bass, with all the flying sets and the enormous number of costume changes for the ensemble (wardrobe supervisor Meredith Scott, take a well-deserved bow and a breather). The stage effects are magnificent, from the simplest lighting tricks to one of the most astounding onstage costume changes ever undertaken. Never once does the production feel calculated or less than captivating, whether it be the ‘ooooh’ when young Elsa first scatters a few snowflakes, the preemptive applause for “Let It Go,” or the gasp at Prince Hans's betrayal of Anna (an excellently desperate and duplicitous turn by Preston Perez). There’s nothing you don’t see coming, but that wonder is still there.

Broadway in Austin presents Disney’s Frozen, through June 16, Bass Concert Hall. Tickets at austin.broadway.com.

And don’t miss our interview with Elsa herself, Caroline Bowman, “ Caroline Bowman and the Kinder Side of Elsa in Disney's Frozen.