The Stage

The Snow Queen

Published Thursday 11 December 2008 at 11:15 by Kevin Berry

What an atmosphere this production has - forbidding, enticing and exciting.

The audience sits at either side of a snowy, forested landscape, with a model village at each end of the stage. Above is a streak of trailing white, being thrust this way and that, across a starlit sky. It is the Snow Queen. When she speaks we hear a murmuring, haunting soundtrack.

Chris Chilton as Grandma tells the story, before becoming characters in the tale. Wonder and danger are at every turn, along with fun, as the audience is brought into the story in wonderfully involving ways.

There are marvellous crows and robbers to remember and Grandma (obviously, but for only a moment) dressed as a penguin and then a reindeer.

Pamela Okoroafor plays the intrepid heroine Gerdar faithfully. When her friend Kai (Duncan Barton) has his heart frozen, his nastiness is really something. Watching him continue a pell-mell sledge ride, by holding a model sledge in his outstretched hand and continually turning round, is spell-binding.

Ivan Stott’s music is wonderfully appropriate, while Mike Kenny’s script is vivid, alive and technically brilliant. Not a word is wasted. This is children’s theatre from experts.