From the Snowy Slopes to the Stage

I am not someone anyone would consider a musical fan. Most of the time I tend to find musicals annoying as people sing a conversation in five minutes that could have been had in fifteen seconds. With that said, some musicals are fine, especially when the music is really good. And when you get a strong production with good dancing, good singing, and decent tracks, it can all come together into something I’m willing to watch at least once. Usually just once, but sometimes more often.

While I haven’t gone back and watched Disney’s Frozen since the last time I reviewed it for this site (which was back in 2022), I didn’t hate the animated music. It’s fun enough, with a good story and decent songs. I wouldn’t have considered it a contender for turning into a Broadway show considering all the special effects and other, hard to translate concepts that work well in an animated film but wouldn’t seemingly work on a live stage. Of course, I could say the same thing about plenty of other Disney musicals, and yet works like The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid have all had their share of Broadway productions, so what do I know. If Disney can pull it off with those works, why not with Frozen?

The show wasn’t as big a hit as some productions for the Mouse House (The Lion King, for example, is still running on Broadway with no signs of stopping), but it did delivery for a few years in Broadway, the West End, and other international markets. Many think that COVID hit the production hard as it debuted for limited showings in Denver in 2017 before taking residency on Broadway from 2018 through 2020. Naturally, the pandemic ended its run for a while and it didn’t come back to Broadway after. It has had longer stints in Japan, Germany, and London’s West End, and it’s the West End production, filmed at the Theatre Royal, that Disney put out on Disney+ in 2025.

Functionally, if you’ve seen the movie Frozen then you know what’s going on in the musical production of Frozen, since the stage version follows the story, script, and much of the music of the film. Elsa and Anna are the young daughters of the King of Arendelle. They’re close as sisters can be, but Elsa has a secret: she can create ice, freezing the air around her hands. An accident when the two are young girls sees Else accidentally unleash her powers on Anna. The younger sister is saved, but after that the King teaches Elsa to hide her powers, to avoid her sister, to never let anyone know what she can do.

Years later, after the King and Queen are lost at sea, Elsa (Laura Dawkes) has come of age and is set to assume the throne. However, her powers have continued growing, getting more powerful, to the point that she struggles to control them. Meanwhile Anna (Stephanie McKeon), who has been cooped up alone in the castle for years, revels at having people in the castle for the coronation. When a prince, Hanz (Oliver Ormson), shows up and shows interest in her, it seems like love at first sight. But when Anna tells Elsa of their plans to get married (after only knowing each other for a day), Elsa freaks out, unleashing her powers and plunging the sunny, summer kingdom into hard winter. She flees the castle and it’s up to Anna to find her sister and bring her home and unfreeze their kingdom.

For fans of the animated film, this filmed theatrical production will have basically all you want. It’s got the whole story of the film, redone in musical theater format, with big production values and pretty decent musical numbers. Of course, the music is going to be good since this is the music from the film, only slightly arranged from time to time. There’s a couple of newer numbers (that are largely forgettable), but for the most part it’s the songs you know in a slightly different format so you can see the whole thing all over again.

For parents that have had to watch the animated version over and over again because of their kids, I could see how this production would be a real boon. Even if it’s all the songs you know, at least it’s done in a new way, with subtle new twists on the material to keep viewers interested. It’s still Frozen, so there’s very few surprises here. It doesn’t actively rewrite any parts of the story and, by and large, is slavishly devoted to bringing the movie to the stage. But at least it’s slightly different enough that maybe the kiddos would enjoy watching this too, putting a changed up version in rotation from time to time.

And the stage version does an admirable job of translating some of that movie magic over to the live format. With good use of lighting and big stage props, the frozen effects of the film are decently recreated. A two-person costume is used to bring Kristoff’s reindeer, Sven, alive on stage (as performed by Ashley Birchall and Mikayla Jade). And while I did find it a little weird that Olaf the snowman is done as a puppet with a performer behind him, clearly controlling the puppet (instead of just putting a performer in a costume), the puppeteer, Craig Gallivan, sings and dances and puppet-performs with abandon. He’s really great in the role, weird as it is.

With that said, I can see why this production wasn’t as successful as other Disney works. Where Broadway shows like The Lion King have to get pretty creative in taking a film about singing and dancing animals and turning that into a functioning theatrical show, Frozen is pretty grounded by comparison. It’s not a hard script to move to a theatrical stage, especially considering it’s really just a couple of characters going up a mountain and then coming back down. The stage show doesn’t change up enough to feel so different that you absolutely have to see it as well.

This is, functionally, Frozen and you have to want to see it in a new format to really care about it. Don’t get me wrong, this is a solid production of Frozen, and I think the main leads, Dawkes and McKeon, are great in their roles. Dawkes has the pipes to match Anna’s original singer, Idina Menzel, and she can really belt out the big numbers (especially, of course, “Let It Go”). Meanwhile, McKeon really has fun as Anna, and even gets a little raunchy in her performance. She’s a very charismatic star who clearly knows how to play for a theatrical audience, and it shows. Having this be the filmed version of a live Frozen makes sense as it really is very good.

But at the end of the day is it really necessary? Not really. In much the same way that Disney’s slavishly dedicated live-action film adaptations struggle to say anything new about their stories, this theatrical adaptation of Frozen is so committed to doing the same story, all over again, that it really can’t find many ways to differentiate itself (especially not in ways that really matter). It’s Frozen, again, and the only reason to really watch this is because you love Frozen but are just a little bored of the animated version. If you’re not there, I hardly think this filmed production is going to give you any reason to care. Especially not when the original Frozen is right there, on the same streaming service, just a couple of clicks away.