Review: DISNEY'S FROZEN NATIONAL TOUR at Gammage Auditorium

Disney's FROZEN, now playing at ASU Gammage, is a theatrical success but rises to a "don't-miss" experience for families with the 2013 animated blockbuster movie (once-upon-a-time or currently) deeply integrated into their early lives.

Bookwriter Jennifer Lee (also screenwriter of the film) provides a more developed plot and dives deeper into the characters and particularly their relationships. That elevation makes the story feel more like YA/Harry Potter level fiction than a fairy tale. By visiting Arizona in 2023, that coincides perfectly with the primary local target audience's own development into consumers of more complex storytelling. Toddlers in 2013, now in their early teens, this production could not have timed its arrival any better.

I asked my niece at intermission how many times she thinks she'd seen the movie in her lifetime. Falling right in the perfect window, (three years old at the movies release, 13 now) she calculated at least once per day for at least two years eventually tapering off to well over a thousand times. I'd been on hand for at least several dozen of those viewings. We were ready to compare notes.

The first expansion is a fuller backstory presented in an artistically sound and efficient first 20 minutes spent with the child versions of the lead characters, Anna and Elsa, princesses of Arendelle. The King and Queen are forced to separate the sisters when Elsa's magical manipulation of ice and snow grows out of control and almost fatally wounds Anna.

Anna's memory of Elsa's magic is wiped and the once best friends now stay apart, much to Anna's confusion and dismay. The separation becomes permanent when the King and Queen are lost at sea, leaving Elsa the leader of Arendelle. She's confined by her power and its potential danger. She adopts her father's suggested mantra, "Conceal, don't feel". Arendelle's gates remain closed for years.

On Elsa's 21st birthday, the day of her coronation, the sisters have a disagreement over Anna's request to marry the dashing Prince Hans despite meeting him just a few hours earlier. Elsa's rebuke of the engagement leads to an argument and an accidental, aggressive display of Elsa's power. Horrified, Elsa flees up the snowy mountains leaving Arendelle frozen over from her panicked outburst and escape.

Anna's bold rescue attempt leads to the next successful expansion of the story. Anna and Kristoff (Anna's hired guide to North Mountain) are presented with more time and dialogue to grow their friendship and our desire to see them pair up. An added duet ("What Do You Know About Love?") is a delightful and purposeful new piece of the score.

The technical aspects of the show are everything you'd want and expect from a high-budget Disney production of FROZEN. The design team, Natasha Katz's lighting, Christopher Olam's sets and costumes, special effects by Jeremy Chernick, and video design by Finn Ross, each masterfully delivers the magic, snow, and ice in their various media. Crystal stalagmites, dazzling projections of Elsa's icy castle and her upward ascent to it, nods to Nordic beauty in both culture and geography, of course the sorcery of Elsa's Snow Queen dress, and the gorgeous, mood-shifting Aurora Borealis are just a few examples of the visual feast onstage.

The stagecraft, impressive as it is, doesn't overpower the performances. Lauren Nicole Chapman as Anna is an engaging presence, evocative of the original character but more genuine and nuanced. Her added pensive solo "True Love" is an Act 2 highlight. Her work is madcap and marvelously sung.

Caroline Bowman as Elsa sings like it is an Olympic sport and she's the scrappy up-and-coming athlete. Her personal touches on "Let it Go" got an involuntary jaw drop by me, soon followed by an involuntary eyebrow raise. Ms. Bowman is full of poise throughout, even in her darkest introspection. Elsa benefits the most from the new material. She is the only post-teenage Disney princess and the only one who spends her story as ruler of a kingdom. It means an emotional depth unavailable Ariel and Snow White. Ms. Bowman goes there with sincerity and power.

Comic sIdekick Olaf, the living snowman created by Elsa's magic, is just as much a crowd pleaser as ever. Diligently performed by Jeremy Davis using Michael Curry's puppet design, it was a more than satisfying answer to the question "How are they going to do Olaf?"

That's was the first question my niece asked when I told her we were seeing FROZEN on stage. It was the start of a nostalgic, refreshing revisit to the recent past for me, the distant past for her.

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