The Movie Snob leaves the house for a touring Broadway show.
Frozen: The Musical. A week ago I don’t think I was even aware that there was a Broadway musical based on the Disney movie Frozen, but lo, last night I made the trek down to Fair Park’s Music Hall and saw it. My reaction: It’s fine. The children in attendance, including my six-year-old, seemed to really enjoy it. But was it anything special? I didn’t really think so. There are lots of new songs, but none of them made much of an impression on me—not even the one written for Oaken, the guy who runs the snowbound shop where Anna and Christof try to shop for supplies. (And to say that that song isn’t memorable is pretty remarkable, given that it features a bunch of dancers who I think are supposedly in the buff because they just emerged from a sauna. They’re all wielding leafy branches as fig leaves, and it struck me as comical rather than bawdy.) And they cut one of the better songs from the movie, namely Anna and Elsa’s duet in Elsa’s ice castle during which Elsa learns she has inadvertently frozen the whole world. On the other hand, the sets and special effects were pretty impressive, and the vocal talent was good. Sven the reindeer was entertainingly animated. Olaf was brought to life by making him a large puppet with his puppeteer standing right behind him, but I didn’t think it was too obtrusive. Anyhoo, I thought the stage version of Beauty and the Beast was quite a bit better, but this one is fine for an evening’s entertainment.