In the first half of the new millennium, proverbial powerhouse Disney Animation was losing its stronghold on the field. Having had two past monopolies on the field, their Golden Age with critical and sentimental favorites like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Fantasia, all the way back to the pioneer of the art Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs. Then, after a long lull following Disney’s death in 1967 throughout the 70s and the bulk of the 80s, Disney animation lost their step and produced a long string of inferior flops until it looked like the creator of the genre was being driven from the market. Then in 1989, under new CEO Michael Eisner, Disney reinvented the animated movie musical for a new age with their megahit The Little Mermaid, ushering in an amazing Renaissance that lasted throughout the 90s with the Academy Award Best Picture Nominee Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, and, at the time, the most successful animated film ever, The Lion King.
After many stumbles at the turn of the milleninum (anyone remember the Rosanne Barr travesty Home on the Range?) and the takeover of the artform by computer 3D animation, Disney served up a few minor successes like the highly underrated The Princess & the Frog, whose failure to blockbust was lamely blamed on the sumptuous 2D hand animation and basically put an end to the technique. Slightly better results came with their first 3D fairy tale, Tangled, a variation on Rapunzel. Disney looked perched to give up their crown on the artform to former subsidiary Pixar until their final attempt at a princess fairy tale caused a literal blizzard of success. Inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Snow Queen, which had been on Disney’s developmental docket for decades, even before Snow White had premiered, and almost made it to film in the 50s. Reinvented by Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck, and the addition of Broadway composers Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, their goal became to take the problematic cold, heartless title character and make it a different kind of love story. Having done multiple variations on the “love’s first kiss” and the princely saviors they devised a more contemporary, slightly feminist concept. Focusing the proverbial “true love” on sisterhood, poking fun at contemporary implications of the longstanding Disney tradition of love at first sight (“Who gets married to a man they just met?” is Queen Elsa’s retort to her sister Anna’s request for permission to marry the dashing Prince Hans of the Southern Isles), and even daring to make Queen Elsa, the Snow Queen stand-in, a strong manless ruler like Queen Elizabeth I, with no white knights or handsome princes in sight to swoop in and take charge of her country or her life.
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The 2013 release of Frozen was colossal, taking in an unprecedented $1.27 billion box office for its relatively minimal $150 million investment and became the top grossing animated movie of all time, as well as highest grossing film of 2013 and the fifth highest grossing film ever. (It still remains the 16th highest grossing movie ever, superseded by all the mega Marvel movies and it’s own sequel at #13.) The movie and it’s sequel became so successful that Disney does not include protagonists Anna & Elsa as official Disney Princesses, because the Frozen franchise has been financially more successful than their entire Princess catalogue combined. This meant that it wouldn’t be long before the longtime underproducing branch of Disney Theatricals, who had had only one solid hit with Aladdin in 2014 since The Lion King, would be developing a version to take to Broadway with Lee and the Lopezes adapting their screenplay/score, and in 2018, the much anticipated stage production premiered at the St. James Theatre in New York. As history would have it, Covid ended both the Broadway run and suspended the newly launched 2019 tour. Four years later, that is all hindsight and this Disney behemoth that has charmed a generation of little girls is still at the top of its game.
The current run at the Kennedy Center features some of the most visually stunning storytelling ever. Be advised that even though the Friday night audience was overrun with 6 year olds in Elsa gowns, this stage incarnation is slightly more intense (although still a solid PG, no 13). The cast is phenomenal and flesh out their screen personas perfectly. Not a bedazzled child in the house was disappointed. Director Michael Grandage has given us a thrilling screen to stage interpretation that provides new thrills while still being true to the landmark source that made it all happen.
[NOTE:There will be spoilers ahead, because I can’t imagine anyone going to see this musical that hasn’t seen the movie–or just anyone who hasn’t seen the juggernaut movie–so read at your risk]
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In what is listed as an incredibly complex “Opening” segment (six musical numbers performed by four actors playing younger and older versions of the sisters), Lauren Nicole Chapman jumps out and takes an early lead in the show as Princess Anna, the more accessible of the two since her sister Elsa has been sequestered for everyone’s safety from her burgeoning ice magic. We get a speedthrough of castle life from young girls through the death at sea of the King and Queen to Princess Elsa’s coronation day. Chapman gives an engaging, quirky, heartwarming, and just-the-right-amount awkward performance hitting all the necessary notes of master comedian Kristen Bell, who originated the role in the movie. She is the prototype of the Disney princess who, one by one, gets slapped down for her naivity and belief in the trope of true love and heroic princes.
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Preston Perez as Prince Hans is all a good Disney prince should be, until he isn’t. He hides perfectly behind his handsome polished exterior until he reveals that he’s the unexpected villain, which he reveals in a icily suave, confident, nonchalant fashion. He and Chapman excel in the first half of the first act with their meet cute introduction and unexpectedly athletic duet of “Love is an Open Door”, again possessing the clear smooth vocals of Tony winner Santino Fontana from the movle, performing all the feats of his animated counterpart and executing a rather physical pas de deux in the dance break with Chapman. Perez is equally as seductive as an earnest heroic prince as he is, as the story progresses, as a sleazy, heartless villain
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Dominic Dorset takes on the role of the happy-go-lucky ice salesman Kristoff (whose business Elsa just demolished) with a winsome charm and pleasing vocals. Aiding Anna in the frozen wild to find her sister, he strikes up an easy road camaraderie with her while also being her reality check when necessary. If Anna, or the rest of us, need a reminder that real love isn’t necessarily in the fairy tale, it’s sometimes right in front of your eyes, the boy-next-door handsome Dorset is it.
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Jeremy Davis is hilarious comic relief as snowman Olaf, arriving near the end of the first act when we need it most. While clearly a puppet, and more in a Disneyland way than the award-winning efforts in sister tour The Lion King, puppeteer Davis, in his winter white Scandinavian garb masterfully manipulates and maneuvers him as if he wasn’t even there, while providing sweet, gentle humor and a literally picture postcard delivery of his wistfully funny novelty song “In Summer”.
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But it’s local native Caroline Bowman, the only actor to regularly play Elsa on the national tour circuit since it took to the road in 2019, who clearly carries the show. She is the most solid core on which to center this multi-talented ensemble, and provides all the right shades of Elsa the good Queen, Elsa the tortured sister, and eventually Elsa the strong leader. She provides strength and courage to the only Disney Princess to ever go it solo sans man, and her crystal clear, flawless vocals perfectly land the quintessential number of the show, the ubiquitous “Let It Go”. And let be noted that whereas original movie voice and Broadway icon Idina Menzel regularly struggles with the final note of the song live on TV performances, Bowman nails her landing live eight shows a week to give the audience shivers going into intermission (pun intended).
A few other actors mention recognition for what they bring to their section of the show to keep the action strong and fast paced until the heavy hitters come to play. Annie Piper Braverman and Erin Choi as young Anna and Elsa respectively, get the show off to a spirited start, with Choi showing a great dramatic range beyond her age as a child princess struggling with a life beyond her control and Braverman a comedic fireball as the hyper-energetic young Anna.
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Tyler Jiminez and Renee Reid as the lead mountain magic Hidden Folk Pabbie and Bulda, bring equal parts mysticism and magnetism in their very physical renditions from magical incantations to their 11:00 showstopper “Fixer Upper”. The Hidden Folk are not the loveable, cuddly green, furry gem trolls from the movie, but more robust, exotic, wild-haired, bare-chested mystics of Norse lore, and their movement and presence demands a greater physicality and sensuality, which Jiminez and Reid certainly possess and lead their company with.
Jack Brewer opens the second act with a fun cameo as Oaken, proprietor of Wandering Oaken’s Trading Outpost and Sauna, providing warm clothes and warmer surroundings for frigid travelers passing through. He leads a rousing Scandinavian yodel-laden folk song entitled “Hygge” (translation escapes English but is attempted in the lyrics). The audience is in for a surprise when not only his family emerge form the sauna like the movie but a full company chorus line of nudists with strategically placed towels and eucalyptus boughs (its really much more PG than it seems, with a clever costume design featuring realistic–but not too realistic–body suits under the modified fan dancing; still a solid PG, no 13) [Fun fact: “Wandering Oaken’s” is an anagram for “Naked Norwegians”, so the costume camouflage is doubly inspired]
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And the seemingly incidental role of Kristoff’s reindeer sidekick Sven is actually so demanding it takes two actors to perform a week’s eight shows. Colin Baja at this performance shows why, embodying the heavy fur costume while crouching onto platform foot stilts and leaning into full arm stilts, then loping around the stage in very natural animalistic poses and gaits. Both actors have solid backgrounds in acrobatics and yoga, which the physical demands of the role almost mandate. Baja’s fluid motion with no sign of stress or hinderance is mesmerizing when one envisions what he is accomplishing underneath the cumbersome, center of gravity defying costume.
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Disney Theatrics have always pushed the technical boundaries of the art, from their parks to the stage, and Frozen may just top them all. Beauty & The Beast gave us elaborate period costumes and sets true to their art of animation execution. The Lion King was a revolutionary achievement of melding sets, costumes, lights, and choreography through an African lens in a way that had never been accomplished before. Frozen tops them all for spectacle blending stunning costumes with elegant sets enhanced by a complex series of LED screens on the stage legs and background for a stunning array of breathtaking effects and fluid changes, each topping the one before.
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The big heroes here are Scenic and Costume Designer Christopher Oram and Lighting Designer Natasha Katz. For set purposes and transitions, their perfectly integrated work seamlessly transforms the set from palace to outdoors and a most effective freeze and eventual thaw. The transition into the creation of Elsa’s ice palace is nothing short of spectacular and as effortless-looking as if it has been executed with movie magic. The light effects employed for the freezing of Princess Anna leading into the climax of the show is shockingly realistic.
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As a costume designer, Oram also excels, fleshing out sumptuous court finery based on the Disney movie (the first Disney film to actually hire a costume designer for their 3D artists to translate). In addition to all the familiar looks, he adds touches like the clever sauna chorus line and the newly envisioned mystically sexy HIdden Folk.
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But none of that would even matter when the entire audience sits there patiently awaiting the second biggest dress transformation in Disney history (know your history, little ones), which coordinates all three departments to carry off a breathtaking sequence that easily becomes the best stage transformation ever. It’s visible how it’s done but the fact that it is so flawlessly executed and synchronized to the beat with Bowman’s performance makes that little spinny thing stage Cinderella does on stage look downright high-schoolish. Bowman earns thunderous applause on her modulation when her coronation gown disappears and the iconic aqua sequin “Let It Go” dress is revealed. Eight shows a week.
[Another fun fact, the solid gold (Demi Lovato’s end credits cover) and platinum (Menzel’s cover, which Disney never intended to release) record song “Let It Go”, the first Disney song to break the Billboard Top 10 since Vanessa Williams’ “Colors of the Wind” in 1995, is so universal that Disney’s The Lion King has replaced “It’s a Small World” with it for the song that the encaged Zazu sings to annoy Scar]
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Puppet Designer Michael Curry also deserves credit for Sven and Olaf/Davis who blend effortlessly into Oram’s costume and set designs, as well as function as actual characters with character motion and mobility. They make Baja and Davis’ work pay off in the biggest way.
Rob Ashford’s choregraphy is energetic and mesmerising, adding folk dance, period dance, and intoxicating spirit where he can to a very character-centered story. While his highlights are all mentioned above–the surprisingly vigorous “Love Is an Open Door” duet, the lively Hidden Folk’s “Fixer Upper”, and the clever, totally unexpected “Hygge” fan-dancing, faux nude chorus line–even his ballroom minuets and the chilling Freezing of Anna segment are equally as artistically and visually compelling.
Stephen Oremus superlative music direction elicits stirring results from his cast, starting immediately with the opening Norwegian folk inspired “Vuelie” chorale and progressing through every solo and duet, with his pinnacle being Bowman’s enthralling “Let It Go”. And, as usual, sound designer Peter Hylenski makes the best of the Kennedy Center incomparable acoustics to give Oremus’ efforts flawless sound.
The Kennedy Center continues with their exhilarating season with another visually thrilling production full of superior talent and vision. Don’t let any of the theatre world’s anti-movie or their even worse anti-Disney detractors sway you from seeing this exhilarating production. Those who know me and my disdain for the cold will understand how strong my praise is when I say I was enthralled in this snow-covered winter wonderland and didn’t want it to end. This is a perfect treat for a holiday family adventure or just a nice way to end them and start the new year. If you have any doubt, take my word, my friends and Let-IT-Go down to the Kennedy Center before tickets are Let-It-Gone.
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes with one intermission
Disney’s Frozen currently plays through January 21, 2024, in the Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F Street NW, Washington DC 20566. For tickets, call the box office at 202.467.4600 or purchase online