ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Caissie Levy (Elsa) and the Company of FROZEN on Broadway ©Deen van Meer
FROZEN: THE MUSICAL A BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK By Ellis Nassour
isney’s 2013 Oscar-winning animated worldwide phenomenon Frozen, with colossal grosses in excess of $1.3-trillion, is now a Broadway live-action musical by the film’s Oscarwinning husband and wife composers Kristin Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (Coco). He’s also the Tony-winning co-writer of The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q. Loosely-inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen, Frozen: the Broadway Musical is the story of fearless Princess Anna who sets off with a rugged mountain man in search of her sister Elsa, now Queen, whose curse of cryokinesis has inadvertently trapped their kingdom in eternal winter. For theater audiences, original writer Jennifer Lee created a more nuanced, sometimes darker, script; and the Lopezes wrote over a dozen new tunes to supplement the film’s immensely popular power ballads, “Let It Go” and “For the First Time Forever.” The stage adaptation has shattered the ice ceiling at the St. James Theatre, with week after week record-breaking grosses approaching $3 million—far exceeding previous record holder, The Producers. Incidentally, the figures don’t include a virtual department store of souvenir merchandise on sale. Following a weekend of laying down tracks for the show’s cast album, the men of Frozen—Jelani Alladin, in his Broadway debut, who portrays Kristoff; John Riddle, the dashing Prince Hans; and Greg Hildreth, the human alter ego of Olaf the snowman—sat down to discuss their roles. 86 | OUR CITY, YOUR LIFE | MAY 2018
Patti Murin (Anna) and John Riddle (Hans) ©Deen van Meer