Review: ‘Frozen’ in La Mirada leaves audience warmed ...Middle East

As summer equinox approaches, a brief Ice Age has descended inside the La Mirada Theatre for the rest of the month with the live musical version of Disney’s “Frozen.”

This is the premiere mounting of the Nordic sister act saga at a regional house in Southern California.

While somewhat based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale called “The Snow Queen,” and as girls of all ages (and their parents) know, “Frozen” is the story of two orphaned sibling princesses of polar extremes, one with magical power to create snow, ice and, inadvertently, woe, the other with humanist power and moral cheerfulness determined to create better lives for all.

Directed and choreographed by Houston-based theater maker Dan Knechtges, this version presents in a more intimate staging the familiar strengths and weaknesses that defined the national tour production seen a few years ago at the Pantages and Segerstrom Center.

Perhaps an adherence to Disney’s famously strict rules of the road for presenting its creative products, and/or maybe the smaller-scale economies in this production … whatever the cause, La Mirada’s trademark brio for animating up-beat, up-tempo musical productions is missing.

Even the under-age-10 set – perhaps 20% of Sunday’s matinee audience – was uncharacteristically subdued until Olaf, the snowman affably trundled around by puppeteer Mark Ivy, made his late first act appearance. (The theater’s fourth wall was repeatedly broken with high-pitched cries of “Hi, Olaf!” from the orchestra to the balcony seats.)

The insurmountable difficulty with “Frozen” on any stage is the classic stumbling block of many a musical: Act 2. After launching the story and developing and then exploring character complications, how does a show engage through to its invariably happy resolution?

When we’re lucky, a key solution can be a uniformly high-quality score.

But a head-scratching obstacle here is the insertion of weak songs not found in 2013’s original 100-minute animated hit movie, which was famously driven by the empowering, avalanche-strength pop hit “Let It Go.”

That 10-song score was written by the formidable, married songwriting duo of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. But when the pair was re-commissioned to pad the movie’s length to a longer, two-act live theater format, intermittent flurries of duddy songwriting – especially for secondary “who cares” characters – blanketed the show.

The deepest snow drift, with particularly problematic timing since it is the second act curtain raiser, is “Hygge.” The word “hygge” basically translates from Danish as conveying when life is a snuggle-buggle of comfy and niceness.

Not here it ain’t!

Like skiers careening off course down the hill, original director Michael Grandage bafflingly doubled down on the number, turning it into a wonky full-cast production number. Kind of a showstopper (though not the good kind).

Another structural challenge the musical never solves is that sibling princesses Anna and Elsa, easily “Frozen’s” two potent characters, almost never get to sing together since their storylines take them on separate plot paths.

Regretful sighs aside, there are some positive facets within this production worth celebrating.

Chief among them are lead actresses Cailen Fu and Jenna Lea Rosen, who well fill the adult roles of the siblings.

Veterans of Knechtges’ Houston mounting, each embodies the nature of their characters. Fu sparks red-headed Anna, a girlishly effervescent performance, capturing Anna’s of-the-moment emotional vigor. She has a strong, precise voice, well on display during a show highlight, the powerful ensemble number “For the First Time in Forever.”

Rosen succeeds at tapping Elsa’s emotional distrust of her own magical powers and the damage they may create. The actress has the necessary steely and distant blonde ice queen intensity, which is intermittently layered with caring openness. When it comes time for chest-tone belting in “Let It Go” — while she doesn’t manifest Idina Menzel bigness, who does? — her lower registers exhibit command and discipline.

In a big cast, ably applied by Knechtges through the larger scenes, Garrett Clayton stands out as an especially effective Hans, Anna’s two-faced, power-seeking-in-disguise prince. Last seen in La Mirada in “The Play That Goes Wrong” as an upper-crust toff, determinedly milking scenes for attention, Clayton has soft features of emotional availability he subtly employs in courting Anna, which he later freezes into naked and unapologetic gazes of self-interest.

While not Wicked-ly good, “Frozen’s” ultimate virtue is its attribute of two girls’ turn into womanhood with self-determination and self-realization.

For a show that’s all about the cold, it warms us through these attributes.

Disney Frozen The Broadway Musical’

Rating: 2 1/2 stars (of a possible 4)

Where: La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts. 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada

When: Through June 29. 7:30 p.m., Thursdays; 8 p.m., Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m., Saturdays; 1:30 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays

Tickets: $39-$139

Information: 714-994-6310, 562-944-9801; lamiradatheatre.com

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