Month: July 2023

Staged ‘Frozen’ is icily beautiful and warmly poignant

Carolyn Bowman plays Elsa, a princess with a dangerous magical gift, in the North American tour of Frozen. (Photo by Deen van Meer)

By Richard Ades

Disney’s 2013 flick Frozen was met by universal acclaim and won the Oscars for best animated film and best song. The stage adaptation, which opened on Broadway to mixed reviews in 2018, was nominated for three Tonys but won none.

Apparently, the stage musical is not as perfect as its cinematic forebear. But after seeing the touring version Thursday at the Ohio Theatre, it’s obvious that it remains pretty entertaining.

Not that it couldn’t be better. To pad out the running time, book writer Jennifer Lee added extra scenes that often seem superfluous, while composer/lyricists Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez added extra songs that aren’t as catchy as the original eight.

That the show delivers as much entertainment as it does despite the filler is due to the sterling work of director Michael Grandage and his talented cast, as well as the beautiful stage vistas created by scenic/costume designer Christopher Oram and lighting designer Natasha Katz.

Anna (Lauren Nicole Chapman) and Hans (Will Savarese) dance the night away. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

Like the film, the stage show revolves around the troubled relationship between royal sisters Elsa and Anna, whom we first meet as adolescents. The older Elsa is cursed with the magical ability to inadvertently freeze anyone or anything around her. After a careless act nearly kills her younger sister, Elsa’s parents force her to isolate herself from the world, and particularly from Anna.

On Thursday night, Norah Ann Nunes and Erin Choi played the rambunctious Anna and tortured Elsa, respectively, and indelibly established the personalities they would retain as young women. (Avelyn Choi and Sydney Denise Russell take over the roles at alternate performances.)

The action then fast-forwards several years to find queen-to-be Elsa (Caroline Bowman) still avoiding public contact and nervous about getting through her impending coronation without freeze-drying the guests. Meanwhile, Anna (Lauren Nicole Chapman) is stir-crazy and more than a little man-crazy and looks forward to meeting possible beaus at the coronation ball.  

As Anna, Chapman sometimes lays on the comic schtick a little heavy, but both she and Bowman have abundant acting and singing chops. They use them to flesh out the sisters’ estranged relationship, which suffers a seemingly mortal blow after Elsa accidentally plunges the kingdom into eternal winter and flees into self-imposed exile.

Anna (Lauren Nicole Chapman) and Kristoff (Dominic Dorset) struggle to cross an icy bridge. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

Other major cast members include Will Savarese as Hans, a prince who meets Anna at the coronation and immediately wins her heart; Dominic Dorset as Kristoff, an ice merchant who comes to Anna’s aid after she wanders into a snowstorm in search of her sister; and Jeremy Davis as Olaf, a snowman brought to life by Elsa’s magic.

Olaf is one of the show’s two most ingenious creations, being a puppet that Davis supports and manipulates in full view of the audience. The other is Sven, Kristoff’s four-legged companion, whose expressive movements and postures are delivered by the limber Dan Plehal in a reindeer costume. (Collin Baja plays the role at alternate performances.)

While the relationship between Anna and Elsa provides the show’s dramatic heart, it’s Kristoff, Olaf and Sven who provide most of its humor.

Snowman Olaf (Jeremy Davis) meets Sven (alternately played by Collin Baja and Dan Plehal), who seems to be eyeing the carrot that serves as his nose. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

As in the film, the musical highpoints are the hummable “Do You Want to Build a Snowman,” “For the First Time in Forever” and especially “Let It Go.” The latter showstopping earworm is beautifully delivered by Bowman’s Elsa and is accompanied by a feat of stage magic that defies explanation.

As for the musical low point, that would have to be “Hygge,” a goofy song-and-dance number that wasn’t in the original film. It’s one of several moments that make you wonder why Broadway’s Frozen couldn’t have skipped all the filler and been staged as a poignant one-act.

Still, a two-act Frozen is better than none at all. Onstage or on film, Disney’s tale of sisterly love is a treat.

Broadway in Columbus will present Frozen through Aug. 6 at the Ohio Theatre, 39 E. State St., Columbus. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes (including intermission). Tickets are available at BroadwayInColumbus.com, by calling CAPA at 614-469-0939 or at the Ohio Theatre’s CBUSArts Ticket Center. For information on future tour dates, visit frozenthemusical.com.

Character studies dominate Irish doc, U.S. road flick

Tana (Lily Gladstone) takes a cross-country trip in her late grandmother’s Cadillac in The Unknown Country. (Photo courtesy of Music Box Films)

By Richard Ades

Opening this weekend are two indie films that have more in common than you might think.

The Unknown Country, a drama by first-time director Morrisa Maltz, is about a cross-country trip taken by a grieving Native American woman. North Circular, an Irish documentary written and directed by Luke McManus, is described as “a musical trip through Dublin’s inner city.”

What unites the flicks is their willingness to digress in the presence of strong personalities. In each case, this is a mixed blessing.

The Unknown Country ostensibly focuses on Tana (Lily Gladstone), who takes time to travel to a family wedding in South Dakota even though she just lost her beloved grandmother. She then drives her granny’s Cadillac to Texas in a trek that ends at a landmark once visited by the dearly departed.

Co-written by director Maltz and cast members Gladstone and Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, the film is primarily about Tana’s attempt to come to terms with her loss. However, Tana herself ends up being overshadowed by a series of strong peripheral characters she meets along the road. Among others, there’s a waitress who lives for her cats, a bride and groom who feel they were destined to be together, and an elderly woman who comes to life on the dance floor.

Most of these characters are real people simply playing themselves, making the flick an adventurous blend of fiction and fact. Each of them is interesting, as are several sights Tana sees along the way, including a Native American wedding, a small-town winter festival and a brightly lit Dallas dance club.

The only problem is that we don’t get to know protagonist Tana as well as the people she meets, making the film a bit less than the sum of its very worthwhile parts.

Holding forth at Dublin’s Cobblestone Pub in a scene from North Circular are (from left): folk singers John Francis Flynn, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, Killian O’Donnell and Lisa O’Neill. (Photo courtesy of Lightdox)

In a similar way, North Circular spends much of its time introducing us to people who live near the titular roadway, which winds around some of the poorer sections of Dublin. One of the first is an army veteran who plays the bagpipes for military ceremonies and complains that the younger generation shows little interest in learning the traditional instrument. Yes, it’s a shame, but his story comes across as unnecessary digression.

Fortunately, most of the other interviewees can speak more directly to the film’s subject, which is the neighborhood’s struggles with poverty and encroaching gentrification. And several of them do more than speak—they sing about their losses and grievances, often delivering a cappella laments to a silent audience. The sum total is a memorable trip to a side of Ireland’s capital that is never experienced by the average tourist.

Besides their plethora of minor characters, the two films have one other thing in common: striking cinematography. Andrew Jajek’s images in The Unknown Country are engrossing whether they’re showing quiet human interactions or majestic landscapes such as South Dakota’s Badlands and Texas’s Big Bend National Park. And North Circular’s black-and-white images combine with its somber folk tunes to create what at times amounts to cinematic poetry.  

Rating for each film: 3½ stars (out of 5)

The Unknown Country opens July 28 at the Quad Cinema in New York City and the Nuart in Los Angeles, and will open at additional theaters across the country in the following weeks. North Circular opens July 28 at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema in New York City.