Frozen BROADWAY REVIEWS

• NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF Frozen

  

  Review: ‘Frozen’ Hits Broadway With a Little Magic and Some Icy Patches

  Jesse Green

  Forget girl power, sisterly love and the high-belt clarion call of “Let It Go.” Anxiety over the handling of a precious gift is the theme that comes through loudest in “Frozen,” the sometimes rousing, often dull, alternately dopey and anguished Disney musical that opened on Broadway on Thursday.

  The precious gift is not, I hasten to add, the freeze-ray of Queen Elsa, which threatens her kingdom without any corresponding benefits. (Couldn’t they at least hook her up to a gelato machine?) Nor is it the warmheartedness of her sister, Anna, which puts her at constant risk of unelective cryogenesis.

  No, the precious gift causing so much anxiety at the St. James Theater is the 2013 blockbuster film from which the stage musical has been adapted. After all, $1.3 billion in box office is a lot of ice.

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• ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY REVIEW OF Frozen

  

  Broadway's Frozen is worth melting for

  Kelly Connolly

  You already know how you feel about “Let It Go.” At this point, after a 2014 Oscars performance by Idina Menzel (and subsequent win for best original song), a Grammy, and constant in-home sing-alongs by every child with a dream, Frozen’s anthem of self-acceptance has taken on a life of its own, and it’s too late to train a fresh eye on the tune. But there is a moment in the new Broadway musical that captures the energy of the song as you first heard it and focuses it into a lightning-fast quick change. In a single sequined gasp, Queen Elsa becomes Ice Queen Elsa. The applause is immediate; you might say it could set off an avalanche.

  Broadway’s Frozen, opening Thursday at the St. James Theatre, is walking a delicate rope bridge in a blizzard. The sets are crystalline or candlelit; the sisterly angst between its leads is all too human. There are elements of the production that feel so intimate as to be brand new. But this is an adaptation of a Disney sensation, and it debuts to an audience of fans young and old who know every word of the original — in some cases, not by choice. In bringing the 2013 animated hit to the Great White Way, the film’s original creative team — composers Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez and writer Jennifer Lee — face the unenviable task of turning a family movie into something a little sleeker, a little deeper, and a little more sophisticated, all without losing its most beloved elements. They aren’t reinventing the snowman, but they’ve certainly built a better Frozen.

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• VARIETY REVIEW OF Frozen

  

  Broadway Review: Disney's 'Frozen'

  Marilyn Stasio

  As Princess Elsa says in this snowy, showy stage adaptation of the popular Disney movie, “I’m not as cold as I seem.” Credit the thawing trend in Broadway’s “Frozen” to the lovable characters of Jennifer Lee, who wrote the film and now writes the book for the stage musical, and to the warmly human cast assembled by director Michael Grandage. Caissie Levy is stunning as Elsa, the beautiful princess with the cursed gift to turn her kingdom into ice, and Patti Murin makes a darling Anna, the earthbound princess whose love for her sister is the only thing that can set Elsa free. The theater’s legendary powers notwithstanding, there’s no way that the all-too-solid stage of the St. James Theater can approximate the technical virtuosity of a movie setting. Rather, the magic of the theater comes from its power to open up the world of the imagination. Emerging from the dancing lights of the aurora borealis (as fashioned by lighting designer Natasha Katz) projected on the scrim (by video designer Finn Ross), Christopher Oram’s sets are highly stylized and very theatrical, if not transporting.

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• NY1 REVIEW OF Frozen

  

  Theater Review: Frozen

  Roma Torre

  Full disclosure: “Frozen” is not my favorite Disney princess movie. Loved the message and the song, but the story seemed pretty convoluted even by Disney standards. As a musical, the plotting remains weak, but there is a special magic that only live theatre can produce, and it’s working a charming spell on the Broadway stage. There is, of course, Elsa’s magic, but I’m speaking of the thrill that comes from experiencing familiar material beautifully honed up close and personal. And this one was quite a challenge. How to recreate the G-rated spirit of the animated film while delving into the characters’ personal conflicts, which are pretty psychologically deep.

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• DEADLINE REVIEW OF Frozen

  

  ‘Frozen’ Review: Broadway Lets It Go With Full-Throated Adaptation

  Greg Evans

  Just before the start of a recent performance of Frozen, Disney’s winter blast in a two-decade flurry of remaking Broadway in its own animated image, a tiny girl a row back explained to the adult next to her that the blue and purple lights washing the stage weren’t just any blue and purple lights. “They’re the Northern Lights,” she explained with considerable authority. “It’s in the movie.” Talk about expectations. More than a billion of ’em, if you’re measuring by revenue generated from the massively successful 2013 film, a movie that rewrote at least one Disney convention — no kissing prince needed to wake up any Frozen beauty — and, in “Let It Go,” gave our showtune songbook an anthem of self-acceptance and defiance powerful (and catchy) enough to muscle its way next to Dreamgirls‘ “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” and La Cage aux Folles‘ “I Am What I Am.”

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