Review: The Snow Queen
December 14, 2008
Date reviewed: 9 December 2008
Venue: West Yorkshire Playhouse
Even before the performance of Mike Kenny’s adaptation of The Snow Queen, directed by Gail McIntyre, got underway I had begun to fall under its spell – drawn into the enchanted world by Hannah Clark’s hauntingly beautiful and evocative stage set. Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale The Snow Queen is an intensely visual story; its powerful images stay in the mind, and Clark harnesses this aspect to great effect. Clusters of miniature dwellings and huge outlines of bare winter trees are all starkly depicted in white yet overlaid with extracts from Andersen’s text - a constant visual reminder that for all its apparent familiarity, this is the landscape of story.
Andersen’s The Snow Queen tells the story of two children, Gerda and Kai, whose strong friendship is spoiled when a shard of enchanted mirror enters Kai’s eye, making him selfish and unkind. When the wilful Kai ties his sledge to the back of the Snow Queen’s sleigh he is carried away to her ice palace where he must remain, his heart frozen. However the faithful and determined Gerda braves magic, danger and hardship to find and rescue her friend from the Snow Queen’s enchantment.
Kenny’s retelling of The Snow Queen is pacey and robust and, although he takes a few artistic liberties, he stays faithful to both the essentials and the atmosphere of Andersen’s original. His work is brought to life by a small but talented cast. Pamela Okoroafor, in her stage debut, communicates the uncomplicated purity of Gerda’s love for her friend as she sets out to find him regardless of obstacles, while Duncan Barton ably expresses the selfish and petulant Kai, whose vision of the world has become distorted by the enchanted glass shard that has pierced his heart. Chris Lindon and Ivan Stott multi-task in a variety of character and musical roles with impressive alacrity and humour; Stott’s contribution is particularly impressive as he wrote and performs all the music, including the engaging, folksy songs.
Kenny’s depiction of the role of the grandmother, which is performed by Christopher Chilton, is particularly interesting and plays a key part in making this play so suitable for a young child audience. Kenny develops the role more fully than in Andersen’s original to powerful effect, for the grandmother, as well as being both an agent of humour and wisdom in the play, is also a constant and reassuring presence throughout; an important counterbalance to the undercurrent of compelling danger carried by the figure of the Snow Queen. Despite various guises as a garden flower, penguin, coachman, pigeon and crow she is always recognisable to the young audience as Grandma – her dress and pinny constantly visible underneath her exterior costumes.
The enigmatic figure of the Snow Queen, however, is (appropriately) not acted: as the antithesis of the grandmother Kenny astutely elects not to give her too solid or human an appearance. Instead, her ethereal form is portrayed through swathes of white and ghostly cloth that swirl above the stage signalling her inherent mysteriousness, danger and lack of human warmth.
There is much in this multilayered production to nourish the imaginations of young (and older) theatre-goers. Clark’s evocation of a winter landscape is a visual delight. Kenny’s adaptation is filled with music and song, humour, fantasy, talking animals and the playful mix of size and scale so familiar to children from their games. At the same time he manages to acknowledge the serious and darker elements that undergird Andersen’s tale. Hugely enjoyable, this is quality theatre for children.
-Anne Pitchford
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