Nothing Frozen About This Snow Queen!

Photographer Charlie Flint.

🍷🍷🍷🍷 – 4 out of 5 glasses of Hot Mead! (with NO Ice cubes)

In these days of Pantomime – a glorious British institution – (Oh yes it is!) theatres without massive star-attracting budgets can struggle. Many theatres in the UK depend completely on the revenue from their Christmas show to survive.

So The Theatre At The Tabard’s approach to their crucial Christmas productions has been to craft traditional, child-friendly offerings. And they do them very well! Last year was a well-received production of ‘The Secret Garden’ and E Nesbit’s ‘Five Children and It’ got an outing the year before. This year, the same in-house creative team brings to the stage their engaging take on Hans Christian Andersen’s 1844 fairy tale story of friendship, love, and resilience, ‘The Snow Queen.’

And once again the Tabard have created festive magic!

We learn that an evil troll creates a powerful mirror that distorts reality, making the good appear ugly and the bad seem worse. (Sounds a bit like certain areas of current politics!) But the mirror shatters, spreading shards across the world. Get a grain in your eye, and you will see only the worst of the world and people. Should one lodge in your heart, it will make you cold, cruel and indifferent to the suffering of others. (Yep. Still certain current politics perhaps!)

But of course, it’s a charming story. And although 180 years old it still feels fresh and relevant.

We join the kind and empathic Gerda (played by Rosie Kahlon, who brilliantly channeled the energy of my 12 year old niece! ) and bubbly Kai. (Cameron Chalmers) They are devoted, platonic “best friends forever”. She teaches him to skate, they play with each other and spinning tops and sing carols to the red roses they grow. Kai’s kind Grandma (Maeve Elmore) sits knitting by the fire, bestowing words of wisdom to the inseparable duo. But then a splinter of the magic mirror lodges in Kai’s heart. Overnight, the kindly child turns into a mean teen.

The Snow Queen (a cooly dangerous Freya Crompton) has Kai and transports him to her icy kingdom to complete the task of making him her uncaring acolyte. But kindly Gerda decides she will try and find her best friend. But will she? And can she save him?

Well, you can probably guess the answer, but along the way she has to deal with witches, princesses, thieves and vagabonds. It’s essentially a series of short stories, but has some lively and lovely moments. Director Simon Riley never lets the pace slip, and special mention must go to the technical crew for set and lights and Nick Gilbert who designed the sound and has produced some lovely incidental music.

The puppetry, designed by Jen Marcus is excellent too, with a talking crow and a full-size reindeer!

The term ‘frozen’ comes up quite a lot, and you can see where Walt Disney et al get their inspiration from.

But most importantly and basically, at its heart, this is a show about kindness and friendship. And what more could anyone want from a Christmas production. Slide along to the Theatre at The Tabard for ‘The Snow Queen’ It will chill the coldest heart.

The Snow Queen