‘Frozen’ sisterhood not staged
NEW YORK — Caissie Levy had no use for princesses when she was a girl. She was more the tree-climbing, bike-riding type, always scrambling to keep up with her older brothers. Patti Murin, on the other hand, has long toyed with the tiara. Weaned on “Snow White” and theme parks, she has played princesses throughout her career. Now the two actresses are opposite each other in one of the most anticipated Broadway shows of the spring, Disney’s “Frozen,” a musical adaptation of the Oscar-winning animated film. Levy, a 36-year-old from Hamilton, Ontario, is Elsa, the self-reliant snow queen who struggles to contain the icy impact of her emotions. Murin, a 37-year-old from Hopewell Junction, N.Y., is her younger sister, Anna, who overflows with yearning for the warm glow of love. Conservatory-educated and employed you ate pizza last night”) and mindful of more or less steadily since college, they how she presents herself to the world (“I have each starred at different times in feel really torn about social media — the “Wicked” (Levy as Elphaba, Murin as nice Canadian girl in me finds it vulgar”). Glinda), and they have both weathered She spends much of her free time at the heartbreaking Broadway flops (Levy in gym, leaning on Pilates to ease the mus“Ghost,” Murin in “Lysistrata Jones”). cle strain of her 15-pound costumes, and
And while the new job is as close to shooting hoops to relax. steady as anything gets on Broadway, life Murin is freewheeling (“I really like is not a fairy tale, and both actresses have cheese, so I’m not ever going to give that had moments when they thought “Frozen” up”) and confessional, sharing on social would not be their happily ever after. media about her battle with depression
Murin is among a tiny handful of artists and her unsuccessful first marriage, as who have been with the musical since well as her passion for books, rescue dogs a first reading with actors two years ago. and “The Bachelor.” (“I can’t imagine living The initial director was fired, the set a life where I feel like I have to hide designer quit, choreographers came and something from people,” she said.) went, and the actress who read for Elsa They have forged a fast friendship, holding was not ultimately cast. hands at curtain calls and texting each
Murin hung on. (“She broke our heart other throughout the day. They acknowlevery time,” said Robert Lopez, one of the edge that their sisterly connection helps show’s songwriters.) But for a time, she reinforce the show’s themes, but they also wasn’t even sure she wanted the role. say it is genuine. “When you’re carrying
Shortly after a late 2016 “Frozen” workshop, a show with another person, you’re in it Murin, who is married to actor Colin together for the long haul,” Levy said. “But Donnell (NBC’S “Chicago Med”), learned I had no idea it would be so easy.” that she was pregnant. She was thrilled, “Frozen,” which is now in previews and and surprised, and told her parents she opens March 22 at the St. James Theater, would be having a baby instead of doing arrives on Broadway at a moment when the Disney musical. the treatment and depiction of women in
But then, at eight weeks, an ultrasound the entertainment industry is a much-disrevealed that her fetus had no heartbeat. cussed subject. The stage show, like the She had to medically induce contractions film that preceded it, has two women shaping at home. “It was one of the most absolutely its story — Jennifer Lee, who wrote and devastating times of my life — to go from co-directed the film, then wrote the musi‘we’re having a baby’ to mourning the cal’s book, and Kristen Anderson-lopez, loss,” she said. in partnership with her husband, Lopez,
That same week, Disney — which had wrote the songs for film and stage. no idea about Murin’s circumstances — Elsa has drawn attention as the rare called. The show was arranging a “mix Disney heroine whose happiness is not and match” — auditioning potential Annas tied to a relationship with a man — Levy against potential Elsas — and wanted to noted that she is the first character she’s see Murin again. She refused. “I didn’t ever played who did not have a love interhave it in me,” she said. “I said, ‘You know est. And for the stage, Disney is doubling what I can do.’ If you want to offer it to me, down on Elsa’s fierceness: After dressing I’ll gladly think about it.” her in a negligee (and barefoot) for the
“My plan was to let ‘Frozen’ do what it show’s final scenes during a pre-broadway was going to do, and we were going to try to run last summer in Denver, the creative have a baby again,” she said. team decided to put her in pants (and
But Disney persisted. The creative team boots) on Broadway — a change with obvihad cast Levy as Elsa and was inclined to ous symbolic overtones. give Murin the role of Anna but needed her “For so many reasons, I really identify to come in and read a scene with her. with Elsa,” Levy said, “with her perfectionism,
Murin was torn. “I was made to play and her sense of expectation for this role,” she said. But she wanted a child, herself and for other people, her moral and if she were to do “Frozen,” she would compass, her obsession with right and choose to put that off. She thought back to wrong, and doing what’s best for everyone, a conversation with Audra Mcdonald, the and keeping it together, and being strong. much-honored Broadway actress, who “Part of me didn’t believe that I was the gave birth in 2016 at age 46. princess Disney needed. But now I think
“I said, ‘How do you do this?’ ” Murin that’s precisely why I was cast.” recalled. “One thing she said really stuck As for Murin, playing this princess, one with me: ‘There’s a little soul, just waiting, whose emotionality and spunk match her and that little soul is waiting for the right own, has turned out to feel just right: “I’ve time.’ ” never been so dirty and so exhausted and
Mcdonald also remembers the conversation. so happy while doing a show.” “I just let her know it’s going to be OK — if the role is going to be hers, it’s hers, and the same with the pregnancy,” she said. “I’d been through similar issues, and so she and I were able to commiserate.”
Murin went in to meet Levy — they knew each other only casually — and as soon as Levy asked how she’d been, she blurted out that she had just lost a pregnancy. Levy confided that she had had a similar experience.
“I said, ‘I’ve been there — I know what that is,’ and we just held each other’s hands,” Levy recalled. “And then we went in and read together.”
Levy’s own path to “Frozen” had also been complicated by her desire to be a mother. After a miscarriage, she had a difficult pregnancy in 2016, giving birth at 34 weeks to a 3-pound boy by C-section. Six weeks later, she was in an audition room, belting out Elsa’s power ballad “Let It Go” for the Disney team. She didn’t get the role.
Levy, who is married to David Reiser, a professor of theater at Stockton University, focused on nurturing her son — Izaiah, now 2, and healthy — and began looking for other opportunities. But then Disney called again. A new director, Michael Grandage, was reopening the casting process. Levy returned to the audition room.
Grandage and Levy, who had never met, hit it off. “Caissie came in and offered a layer of humanity that I had never seen in the role,” he said.
Levy got the part. Murin got hers, too. And now every night, Murin’s character has an onstage exchange with Hans, the show’s handsome prince. “You want a family?” Anna asks. “Of course, don’t you?” Hans responds. “Very much,” she answers.
Grandage said whenever he sees the exchange, it is moving in a different way. “She accesses something so pure and beautiful and deep,” he said.
Murin, who hopes to have children after her time with “Frozen” is over, notices it, too. “There are some nights when it really hits me, not in a sad way, but I feel it so viscerally every time,” she said. “It’s never a tough moment, but it’s always an emotional one.”
Yet it is largely Murin’s gift for comedy that has become her calling card.
Douglas Carter Beane, who wrote the book for her last two Broadway shows, “Xanadu” and “Lysistrata Jones,” said the actress’s ability to land a joke stood out. “There was something mischievous going on,” he said. “It was not for nothing that her big debut (in ‘Lysistrata’) was as a cheerleader — she is a cheerleader for everybody in the show, and the audience.”
Essential among Levy’s skills for “Frozen” is the ability to consistently land “Let It Go,” which stands as the musical’s Act 1 closer. “Her vocal resources are so great that they seem to be effortless, and she has convincing emotional range as well,” said Matthew Warchus, who directed her in “Ghost.” “She’s got a very interesting, pure voice, which doesn’t strain when it belts.”
The two actresses live across the street from each other but, like the sisters they portray, are quite different. Levy is rigorously disciplined about sleep, exercise and diet (“there’s nothing worse than being onstage and feeling compromised because