SAM SET TO LET IT GO IN FROZEN

SAMANTHA BARKS can’t hold it back any more — she’s going to Let It Go and star as Elsa, the ice queen with supernatural powers, in the West End production of Frozen.

The musical will re-open the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, next October. Owned by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s LW Theatre group, the venue has been undergoing a £60 million restoration, and it looks breathtaking (from what I’ve been allowed to see).

Barks told me she’s ‘ honoured’ to have been picked to play the fairy-tale queen whose magical powers are so out of control she’s an outcast in her own realm.

When she first watched the 2013 Disney animated film she was moved by Elsa’s predicament: estranged from her adored sister Anna; stuck at the top of a snowy mountain, in an enchanted ice fortress.

And then there’s that song. ‘ When Elsa sang Let It Go in the film, my jaw hit the floor,’ Barks recalled. ‘I’ve had a Let It Go moment,’ she laughed. ‘ Everybody has had a Let It Go moment!’

The number, which won Oscars for song-writing husband and wife team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, has become a universal anthem of empowerment.

‘Elsa has got to learn to control her powers,’ Barks said of her character. ‘She’s a strong woman, and all of a sudden she’s saying: “I’m not going to hold back any more!” That’s so powerful, especially for a young girl. Actually, not just females . . . men are touched by that song, too.’

Barks added that she particularly liked Elsa and Anna’s relationship. ‘The whole show demonstrates the strength of two sisters. There’s no Prince Charming riding in on a white horse. The sisters save each other.’

Director Michael Grandage, who directed the original production on Broadway more than a year-and-a-half ago, said there were many star names hoping to play Elsa. ‘ London’s a big, flagship production,’ he said. ‘Everyone wanted it.

‘You obviously need someone who can sing the big numbers in an extraordinary way. Someone who can act it. Someone who can look amazing in the transformation,’ the director told me from Los Angeles, where he’s been directing the touring production, before heading to Sydney tomorrow to cast the Australian show. BUT he felt Barks brought ‘an extraordinary other quality’ to Elsa.

Grandage told me that during Barks’s final audition in London, he and Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatrical Productions, turned and looked at each other.

They had heard Let It Go sung every which way. ‘But we felt we’d been taken through that song as if for the first time,’ he said. ‘She brought an originality to it.’

Both Barks and Grandage told me about a new number, I Can’t Lose You, that’s been written for the show. It was given a pre-tour try-out in Schenectady in upstate New York, and will be introduced properly in LA and London.

‘ It’s the two sisters singing together,’ Grandage explained.

Many other changes are also proposed for London. Grandage said he and the creative team, including writer Jennifer Lee, choreographer Rob Ashford and designer Christopher Oram, want to introduce ‘bespoke moments’ for the West End. ‘It will be the most evolved version of Frozen.’

The success of the Frozen 2 film, released here two weeks ago, has added to the phenomenon. ‘The brand is strong,’ says Grandage.

He and his colleagues will meet with casting directors in late January for final auditions to find an actress to play Anna.

Priority booking for Frozen opens in late January, with general ticket sales from March 6. Groups and schools can order from February 24.