Frozen – St James Theatre, New York

Caissie Levy and Patti Murin and the company of Frozen at the St James Theatre, New York.
Picture: Deen van Meer

Frozen continues at the St James Theatre, New York.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Say what you will about the Disney people, often berated for merchandising rapacity or theme-park mentality, they know how to put on a show. And the corporation’s magic dust – or whatever you call that stuff that Tinker Bell scatters about – is liberally sprinkled on Frozen, the stage adaptation of its 2013 mega-hit animated film. It makes for a musical that shimmers and shines like an old-time fairy tale mashed with Broadway pizzazz.

The book by Jennifer Lee, who wrote and co-directed the film, may not always be as coherent as it could be, as it rushes through the complicated storytelling to make room for the requisite production numbers and some 12 new songs written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, adding to the score they wrote for the film.

Still, with the assistance of Michael Grandage’s symbiotic direction, it makes its points triumphantly about female empowerment overcoming self-doubt, the glory of sisterhood and the potency of love, true love.

Just in case you need refreshing, the plot concerns Elsa, princess of Arendelle, later queen, possessed with a secret power to transform people and things into ice. It’s a power she can hardly control, especially when she gets emotionally worked up.

There’s her loving younger sister, Anna, who can’t understand why she has to be separated from Elsa, and then there’s Hans, a handsome and smooth prince from another land, who with 12 older brothers is a long way from the throne and romances Anna with villainous intent.

There’s also the good-hearted and rough-hewn ice peddler, Kristoff, who becomes Anna’s ally – and more – as they go searching for Elsa; the newly crowned queen has retreated from her kingdom after plunging it into seemingly perpetual winter. And we don’t want to forget the “Hidden Folk of the Mountain”, never quite fully explained, and certainly not, Olaf, the snowman who comes irrepressibly to life.

All these characters, though, are given their due, in a gallery of exuberant performances. Patty Murin’s Anna goes seamlessly from buoyant comic to fearless adventurer and devoted sibling, while belting out such big aspirational numbers as ‘For the First Time in Forever’ or happily bickering with Kristoff (an endearingly macho Jelani Alladin) in the jaunty quasi-old-school Broadway duet ‘What Do You Know About Love?’

Caissie Levy make a stately Elsa, and there’s no winking about that secret power of hers. It’s played by her and everybody else with all the intense seriousness of one of those old-time ‘disease of the week’ television movies. And finally, when she realises that she’s going to control her power rather than the other way around, it’s a moment of triumph that transforms her from despairing heroine to glamour-girl royalty.

That turn, of course, is expressed in ‘Let It Go’, the Oscar-winning song that soared to top of the charts, taking on a life of its own apart from the movie. Levy delivers it with more than the expected power for a knock-’em-dead Act I blackout. And the song’s legions of fans will be happy to know it turns up again in the finale.

John Riddle gives the duplicitous Hans the perfect Prince Charming aura, while the snowman Olaf comes vividly to life as a life-sized puppet, worked by a fully visible Greg Hildreth, who seems to share quite joyfully the snowman’s personality.

Equally expressive is Sven, Kristoff’s reindeer companion, a terrific full-animal costume inhabited by Andrew Pirozzi who manages to give the costume both soul and animal physicality. It must be an exhausting job, At certain performances, Adam Jepsen plays Sven.

Kudos is also due the on-the-money performances of the kids playing Young Anna and Young Elsa. At the performance reviewed, they were Mattea Conforti and Brooklyn Nelson. (The roles are shared with Audrey Bennett and Ayla Schwartz.)

From the prancing of the peasants and the formality of guests at a coronation to the kickline of sauna bathers, Rob Ashford’s choreography exudes a freshness, and the whole physical production is an eye-filling wonder, thanks in no small part to Christopher Oram’s richly textured scenic and costume design, glowing under Natasha Katz’s lighting.

Special effects (Jeremy Chernick is special effects designer) add a final layer of magic: the way people and landscapes turn into ice; the sheaths of ice that spring from the ground to protect Elsa from her pursuers; how Elsa’s dark traveling clothes turn in a wink into a sparkling gown worthy of a couture runway, while a crystalline palace forms about her; and the perils of the ice-covered rope bridge that Anna and Kristoff must cross on their journey to find Elsa.

All this along with a 21-member orchestra, conducted by music supervisor Stephen Oremus, providing stirring accompaniment or tension-building underscoring. It all fuses to make Frozen a show that should melt even the coldest of anti-Disney hearts.

Ron Cohen