Disney’s FROZEN, The Broadway Musical

Stanley BFL Canada Stage to January 4, 2026

Tickets from $39 at 604- 687-1644 or www.artsclub.com

Posted November 14, 2025

Either little kids are much, much smarter than I give them credit for or my cognitive ability is in more serious decline than I feared. But the plot of Disney’s FROZEN, The Broadway Musical is so fantastical and convoluted that I had a hard time figuring it all out. Characters include Olaf, a talking snowman, and Sven, a reindeer, not to mention a princess (later a queen) who can shoot snow and icicles from her fingertips. She can, and does, turn the whole mythical town of Arendelle into ice. To avoid the downside of this special gift, she wears gloves and leaves town.

I might be the very rare person who has not seen the 2013 animated film; probably every kid in the Stanley theatre audience had seen it, along with their parents. So, understanding what was going on was no problem for them. But Disney’s FROZEN virgin that I was, I was quickly snowed under.

What I gleaned was this: young Princess Elsa darn near killed her sister Princess Anna (pronounced (AW-nuh) with her icy power when they were kids and so young Elsa was removed from the palace by her mother and father, the King and Queen. A storm at sea killed her parents and Elsa, fearing her power, stays away from Arendelle until her coronation, years later, as Queen Elsa. Younger sister Anna looks forward excitedly to being reunited with Elsa – they are both now adults, of course – but Elsa, fearing she will hurt her sister again, gives her the cold shoulder.

At some point Queen Elsa manages, inadvertently, to turn the whole town into a never-ending winter covered in snow and ice and so back she goes into self-determined exile. Princess Anna goes after her, there’s a chase and the threat of violence to the queen; there’s a betrayal, there are ‘forest folk’  who perform incantations, there’s a sauna and a bunch of half-naked people wearing funny hats and towels. The sisters are eventually re-united, Queen Elsa learns to control her power without wearing gloves, Princess Anna falls in love and it all ends happily ever after.

FROZEN, The Broadway Musical began life as Frozen, the 2013 Walt Disney Animation Studios’ musical fantasy film. By 2018 Frozen had been adapted by Disney Theatrical Productions into a musical with music and lyrics by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez with book by Jennifer Lee. The musical ran on Broadway for a couple of years before touring North America, Australia, Singapore, Japan, London’s West End, Germany, the Nordic countries, and the Netherlands.

Apparently, even before the animated film premiered, there were plans for a musical. In a 2014 interview with Southern California Public Radio, Tom Schumacher (president of Disney Theatrical Group at the time) is quoted as saying: “The first priority [for Disney Theatrical] … is when you have a property that is as beloved and music-based as Frozen, that has to get an enormous amount of my attention. To say, “How do we take this and make a sophisticated, adult evening of theater out of it?”

For a sophisticated, adult evening of musical theatre we don’t think “Disney”, we think “Sondheim.”

However, under the capable direction of Ashlie Corcoran, this is a strong, audience-pleasing production. The really big song of this show is, “Let It Go” and that’s what I finally did. With set design by Scott Penner, lighting design by Michelle Ramsay and costume design by Alaia Hamer, the show is gorgeous. Shelley Stewart Hunt’s choreography is smart and well-executed by the cast of almost two dozen. Under Ken Cormier’s lead, seven musicians perform the music live each night.

The singing – and there are loads of songs – is grand: my hair stands on end when Steffanie Davis, in a small-ish role, lets loose. As Queen Elsa, Chelsea Rose Winsby has plenty of gravitas and she sings beautifully; Synthia Yusuf, as Anna, shows her strong comedic chops; Jeffrey Follis makes an engaging snowman; and Kamyar Pazandeh is boy-next-door appealing as Kristoff.

This is a big, big show with tremendous production values. Frankly, I think it’s a bit scary for little kids and downright confusing for grownups. You can look hard for a feminist message but unless you equate being able to freeze everything in sight with something like having a really bad temper, I don’t think there’s a feminist element worth buying into.

However, the show is beautiful and it will probably be at the top of every little girl’s Christmas wish list. Grownups can go online and read a synopsis so they’re not completely confused.  Alternately, they can just “Let It Go”, sit back and enjoy how pretty it all is.