“The most important and most
difficult task in raising a child is helping him find
meaning in life.”
–Bruno Bettelheim
Fairy Tales give us meaning. Authorities as
varied as the noted child psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim,
the folklorist Joseph Campbell and the poet William
Butler Yeats have all argued for the primacy of fairy
stories as a means for children (and adults) to approach
and accept their role in the world.
It could be
argued that this applies no less today than in the
distant past; and lovers of fairy stories will be
thrilled to see Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow
Queen brought to life in a charming new musical,
adaptation by Bill Solly and Donald Ward, and directed
by Igor Goldin.
Many of the stories we think of
as fairy tales come from a handful of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century chroniclers who compiled and
homogenized ancient folk stories, religious myths and
portions of earlier literary works, while a few -- like
Andersen’s tales -- are original literary creations
imitating in style the stories collected by the likes of
the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault.
The
story of the new Snow Queen is Andersen’s: a
little girl meets the boy next door in a garden, but he
gets carried off by the goblins, and she must go on a
long quest to rescue him from the castle of the Snow
Queen and bring him home again. But Solly and Ward’s
adaptation blends the folkloric and the fanciful with
classic musical theater style and a number of modern
touches. Their boy and girl meet in a rooftop garden,
and while most of the action takes place in a fairy land
of princesses and magic, there are persistent hints that
the “real world” our heroes are struggling to return to
is in fact New York City.
The Snow Queen
is fun, modern and wry enough to keep adults amused, but
retains its roots in a tradition of fairy stories that
teach us what life is about. While it never quite
lectures, it retains the instructive tone of a fairy
tale, in which faithfulness and devotion are rewarded,
wickedness is punished, and wandering away from one’s
parents is a sure way to get kidnapped by goblins.
Solly’s music and lyrics do a lot of the show’s
heavy lifting; his tunes are catchy, sophisticated and
occasionally poignant. The lyrics are also quite good,
and peppered with enough wry humor to keep adults and
sophisticated youngsters on their toes. Aficionados of
the musical theater are unlikely to see anything
particularly fresh here, but altogether, the show is an
effective little package.
The down side to the
music being strong is that it sometimes overshadows the
staging. Director Goldin often seems to be rushing
through transitions to get the characters into the next
song, rather than making every moment count. Since the
play is done in a storybook-theater style in which all
the props get pulled out of a trunk on stage, actors
change characters by changing hats, and scenes shift as
quickly as the imagination allows, a little more
specificity could really help.
But the actors
do a very smart job of it, and leave little to complain
about. Jessica Calvello steals the show with her
hilarious Garbo-esque take on the Snow Queen; Katy Frame
and Stephen Weston are very well cast as the boy and
girl, and Nathan Anderson has some nice humorous moments
as the bumbling Goblin King.
Across the board,
the cast is funny, cute and clever. In fact, everything
about this show is charming.
This may be its
biggest weakness. After all, Hans Christian Anderson’s
stories, like the Grimm’s tales they are modeled on,
always have their ugly side.
That is the way of
fairy stories. For children suffer, and suffer acutely,
from things that adults have long forgotten the pain of,
and the heroes children identify with are often those
who bear the greatest pain and endure the strictest
trials. And children see wickedness in the world, and
violence and heartlessness, and judge it with a clarity
that adults, who have learned to engage in wickedness
themselves, also forget. The stories that captivate
children contain awful, evil villains who in the end are
meted out horrid and typically brutal punishments. Folk
fairy tales have long reflected these things; and the
great authors of children’s literature -- like Anderson,
Roald Dahl, Lewis Caroll and L. Frank Baum -- have
always understood them. The fundamental dramatic
contrast in Andersen’s Snow Queen is that the
human heart, which is capable of such warmth and love,
can also compass such coldness and cruelty.
In
Solly and Ward’s Snow Queen, even the monsters
are cute and charming. The Queen is farcical and funny,
the Goblin King a silly buffoon. The little girl’s
Gerta’s greatest moment of trial, when she walks through
the ice to the Snow Queen’s palace without shoes,
happens offstage, and the ensemble sings an upbeat song
about it that praises the girls courage, but ignores her
pain.
In one scene in the play, a character is
pricked by a rose, for, as the narrator points out “all
roses have thorns.” But The Snow Queen does not.
It is sweet, but prickless. The lack of a villainous
villain, or of a heroine who triumphs over pain and
death, may not make the show less enjoyable. But, to my
mind at least, it is weaker, less memorable, less
satisfying -- less of a fairy tale – than it could be.
How can we value light without spending at least
a few moments terrified in the dark?
Hans
Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen can be read
online here.
Bruno Bettelheim’s
The Uses of Enchantment is available through The New York Public
Library.
Editor's Note:Cast member
Rebecca Halpin is a reviewer for offoffonline.
 Click here to view the
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Triad
Theatre |
Category: Children's
Theater
Written by: Lyrics by Bill
Solly, Book by Bill Solly & Donald
Ward
Directed by: Igor
Goldin
Produced by: Bill
Solly
Opened: July 11,
2004
Closed: September 5,
2004
Running Time:
Theater: Triad
Theatre
Address: 158 West 72nd St., 2nd
Fl.
New York, NY 10023
Mapquest Directions
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Tickets:
$15.00
n/a
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CastNathan Anderson as Goblin
King, Faven,
Hollyhock
Jessica Calvello as Rose,
Snow Queen
Katy Frame as Gerda
Rebecca Halpin as
Goblin, Bluebell, Princess, Robber Girl\'s
Mother
Rebecca Stavis as Old Lady, Little robber
Girl
Marc Tumminelli as Narrator, Prince
Stephen
Weston as Kai
Creative TeamWritten
by: Bill Solly & Donald Ward
Directed
by: Igor Goldin
Produced
by: Bill Solly
Light
Designer: Tonya Pierre
Sound
Designer:
Set
Designer:
Costume
Designer: Alan Michael
Smith
Choreographer:
(Other artistic
personnel)
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