For the first time in forever, it’s Elsa on stage
THE smash-hit song Let It Go, from the animated film Frozen, helped the movie become one of the top money- makers in cinema history.
Idina Menzel sang the number — written by Kristen Anderson Lopez and Robert Lopez — in the picture, which came out five years ago.
But it wasn’t until I saw Caissie Levy, as Princess Elsa in the Broadway-bound stage version, sing it that I fully understood what it was about.
For starters, there were schoolgirls — and grown women — in the audience. Wearing tiaras. And Elsa gowns. They told me they identified with that song.
‘They see the empowerment of a woman in that song,’ said Michael Grandage, the British director hired by Tom Schumacher (head of Disney Theatrical) to direct Frozen.
‘All sorts of groups have taken that song as an anthem for themselves,’ Grandage explained when we met in Denver, where the show is having an ‘outta town’ try-out. (I caught him as he was preparing to head home to London for the first time in more than seven weeks.)
Watching Ms Levy’s powerful performance, I got the sense that Elsa was singing about accepting responsibility for who and what she is; and that, somehow, she’ll come to terms with the freaky power she has to turn things — and people — into ice.
At its heart, though, Frozen is a love story: about Elsa and her sister, Anna.
Grandage agreed. ‘The new tag line for the show is “Love is a force of nature”, and above all, that’s what it’s about,’ he said.
Anna’s played by Patti Murin; and she and Levy drive the narrative — along with the character Kristoff, a travelling ice salesman. That part is normally played by Jelani Alladin, but he had a throat bug last Friday, so I saw understudy Noah J. Ricketts, who I thought was superb.
Frozen’s full of colour-blind casting; and I liked that, too. It seems fitting that, at a time of racial divisiveness in the U.S., the ensemble should be so diverse.
Grandage and his creative team, including designer Christopher Oram and choreographer Rob Ashford, have come up with some sublime moments in what is an awesome work in progress. But they still have things to complete before the show reaches the stage of the St James Theatre in New York on February 22.
‘We know what we have to do,’ Disney’s Schumacher said.
He insisted that Frozen is rooted in fable and Shakespeare. ‘It’s As You Like It — with a talking snowman,’ he joked.
Grandage officially resumes work with the cast in January, but he and Schumacher met in London this week to quietly go through their to-do list.
After Broadway, they will turn their attention to where Frozen will reside in London . . . in 2019.