cue whacky characters, animal sidekicks … songs, and general Disney shtick.

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These days I don’t go to the theatre much, so I don’t bother to review shows anymore. However, I recently took my daughter (4 1/2) to watch Frozen: The West End Musical. So here’s my quick assessment.

I assume you’re familiar with the story, but here’s a brief summary for the uninitiated (those aged 25 and above who have no children or grandchildren): a princess cursed with Midas-like all-who-she-touches-turns-to-ice magic powers struggles to be close to her sister for fear of freezing her — cue whacky characters, animal sidekicks, wholesome adventure, songs, and general Disney shtick.

The stage show follows the story, characters and even dialogue of the film very closely, only wisely departing in order to accommodate the different medium that is theatre. For example, the snow troll makes no appearance (it would have been an expensive technical nightmare and would have added nothing to the show) and Oaken, of Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post fame, now has a wonderful little musical number involving his apparently sauna-dwelling family.

So it gives everyone everything they’d want. There is an argument that a two hour long show (the film comes in at an hour and forty-two) should have been able to iron out some of the plot wrinkles of the film, fleshing out the story. Nonetheless, the show didn’t overstay its welcome, and it just scraped not being too long for the little’uns in the audience: some looked like they were on the verge of blowing.

The special effects were great. The musical numbers were as show-stopping as ever. The only slightly jarring thing in the performance that I saw is that young Elsa was race-swapped with a black girl. I wasn’t the only person who found this a bit odd. Of course, there is nothing per se wrong or bad about this; the issue was really that grown-up Elsa was played by a white woman(!) This seems like an odd choice and I’m not sure why it was made, but it didn’t harm the show apart from a few minutes of evident confusion on the part of a number of kids.

A great adaptation of the film and one you surely must see with your kids. We sat in the second-worst seats in the house, and the view was still plenty good; no need to shell out 150 quid a ticket when 30 will do. As an adapted show, in the vein of Lion King and co, I will give this a 4 out of 5, but as a show in its own right, I think 3/5 is fair. So, on average 3.5, rounded, a 4/5.

4/5

© 2023 Bryan A. J. Parry

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