I saw the Korean premiere of Frozen. My first thought was that Min Kyung-ah had finally found a show that could properly showcase what she can do. She sang very well as Jasmine in Aladdin, but I was disappointed that an actress who could sing like that was not given enough songs. By the second half of Act II, I was wishing she would just sing “Speechless” whenever she felt like it. Forget the plot. Singing that well was reason and narrative enough. I even had that ridiculous thought.

Frozen gave me much more to listen to. “Let It Go” had the obvious impact, but Elsa also had major solos such as “Dangerous to Dream” and “Monster,” as well as duets with Anna. The key phrase “Let it go” was sung in English. It is so familiar around the world that keeping those words in English actually made it feel less awkward in a Korean-language production. The familiar impact of the chorus remained intact.

Min Kyung-ah is an actress who can freely move from a delicate sound to an explosive high note, interpreting individual syllables through her voice, facial expressions, and movement. Even when power is needed, she does not simply push. Her voice stays clean and projects straight ahead. In Aladdin, I was frustrated that they had cast an actress like this without giving her enough opportunities to sing. Elsa was a role that allowed her to show all of those strengths.

Choi Ji-Hye was also very good as Anna. Her voice was clear and transparent, with excellent diction. She danced well, too, and her cute, slightly odd facial expressions and movements brought out Anna’s mischievous side. She was a naive princess running around in search of love, but ultimately willing to sacrifice herself to save her sister. I hoped she would remain just as innocent even after marrying Kristoff.

The two actresses also sounded very good together. I do not particularly like hearing two singers with wide vibratos oscillating at different rates and creating destructive interference. Both Min Kyung-ah and Choi Ji-Hye have relatively clean voices. Their pitches matched well, and the harmonies remained clean when their bright, beautiful upper notes were layered over the slightly fuller lower notes.

Hans also had a bright, straight sound, with high notes that landed cleanly. After the performance, I watched the Broadway version again and noticed that Cha Yoon-hae as Kristoff took some of the dancing rather gently. But he sang well, so that was fine. I was especially happy to hear “Kristoff Lullaby,” which I had already liked, when he realizes in Act II that he is in love with Anna. The ensemble also sang and danced very well.

Olaf naturally attracted attention from the moment he appeared because the character itself is so strong. The puppet’s mouth was precisely synchronized with the songs. However, there were moments when the eyes remained open for quite a long time, or the mouth simply opened and closed in a relatively symmetrical motion, making the puppet itself more noticeable. It is hardly fair to compare a Korean puppeteer just after opening with Broadway performers who have played the role for years. The facial performance may become more natural as the run continues, particularly through subtle eye movements and small changes in the angle of the head.

Sven the reindeer was also interesting. I could not quite work out the structure while watching the show. When I later looked up production videos, I saw how the performer supports the body in a very demanding position while creating the movements of a four-legged animal. I had a similar thought watching The Lion King. In a role like this, muscular strength and endurance become part of the performance along with the puppetry itself.

The show begins with the sisters as children. A sparkling bed, young Elsa creating snow, and Olaf open the first chapter of Disney magic. The transition from the child actors to the adult Elsa and Anna was also smooth.
At first, I had a slightly odd thought. If their parents were so worried about Elsa’s magic, why not raise Anna to become queen and let Elsa live quietly? They might have protected the kingdom without the public ever learning her secret. By the end of the show, however, I thought the opposite made more sense. Elsa is responsible and genuinely concerned about her people, which makes her suited to being queen. Anna is innocent and free-spirited, and it suits her better to live without the obligations of the throne.

That also made me notice how often the Duke of Weselton says, in one form or another, what two girls could possibly do. By the time the sisters protect the kingdom in their different ways and each finds the life that suits her, the theme Disney wants to present is fairly clear.

The palace scenes early in Act I did not look particularly different from those in other large-scale musicals. The stage changed once winter began. LEDs surrounded the inside of the stage box and extended onto the proscenium columns, turning a realistic palace into a fantasy world. The Broadway production reportedly used about 4.7 million LEDs. In the Korean production, LEDs were also used extensively inside the stage, around the proscenium, and across the floor.

I particularly liked the snowflake-shaped floor lighting used to represent Elsa’s power and the effect of ice spreading across the stage. Whenever Elsa used her power, a space filled with color could suddenly freeze and become an entirely different scene. Come to think of it, winter and ice are very effective materials for stage transitions. The entire texture of a space can change through light and projection without physically replacing every piece of scenery.

The scene in which Anna and the others froze at once was also impressive. Growing ice crystals were projected onto their white costumes. It was a relatively traditional use of beams and projection, but the effect worked very well.

In Act II, “Hygge” was pronounced almost like “ooga.” The sauna scene was deliberately cartoonish. It seemed to function as a Disney-style comic relief, with the cast suddenly putting on a show for the audience in the middle of a story that could otherwise become rather solemn. For a moment, I wondered whether I had seen something similar at a Disney resort years ago. If the only purpose had been to change Anna’s clothes, she could simply have gone backstage and returned in another costume. The point of the scene was clearly the show itself.

I did like the way the stage musical brought more of a Nordic sensibility into the story. The trolls from the film became the Hidden Folk, giving Kristoff a family and a little more history. The ancestry of Elsa and Anna’s mother was also connected to them, bringing the sisters’ past and Elsa’s magic into the same world. Hans, meanwhile, is a prince of the Southern Isles. I do not know whether the Northern Isles connection of the Hidden Folk and the Queen was deliberately intended as a contrast with Hans and the Southern Isles, but the north-south geography was certainly more noticeable to me on stage than it had been in the film.

I had expected far more ensemble numbers and overt showmanship directed toward the audience simply because this was Disney. Apart from scenes such as “Hygge,” it was more restrained than I expected. At first, it reminded me a little of a Disney spectacular that you line up for at a resort, watch for a few dozen minutes, and leave. Cute, sparkling, and full of songs. Very Disney. But the production did not lean too far in that direction. It remained a musical rather than becoming a theme-park show.

The sound was already clean even though the production had only recently opened. The lyrics were clear, and the overall volume was very good.


Where did the astronomical production cost go?

I had read beforehand that an astronomical amount of money had gone into the production, so I had fairly high expectations for the stage technology. I sometimes found myself watching the stage as if I were trying to figure out where all that money had gone.

Most of the space was created with large LED surfaces and projections, while the necessary scenery and props moved in and out along tracks in the floor. It was not a production like Back to the Future, where the stage technology itself becomes an overwhelming attraction, nor did huge physical sets continually reconstruct the space. I did not feel that I was seeing some extraordinary new piece of stage technology that existed to impress me on its own.

That does not mean the stage was disappointing. Quite the opposite. It was beautiful and fantastical, and the freezing effects worked extremely well. There is a difference between technology being large in scale and technology itself feeling astonishing to the audience. Frozen was more interested in showing the completed illusion than in making the machinery behind it part of the spectacle.

When I notice something strange or interesting on stage, I tend to look up the original production or production videos afterward. I was paying particular attention to the stage technology this time, so there was quite a lot to investigate.


Elsa Quick Change

I was curious about Elsa’s quick change in “Let It Go.” I stared at it through my opera glasses, trying to work out how it happened, but I still could not figure out the exact mechanism during the performance.

At the St. James Theatre on Broadway, the production used the space beneath the stage itself. Videos available online show Elsa standing at a fixed position while a crew member below holds the end of the black dress through a small pit hole. On cue, the crew member pulls it down. As Elsa moves, the new dress is revealed and the black costume disappears below the stage. There are even videos from early performances in which the timing seems to be slightly late and a bit of black fabric remains visible under the new dress or on the stage for a moment.

Touring productions use a circular platform. It travels along a track to center stage, and Elsa transforms while standing in the middle. The platform can provide its own space for retrieving the costume, making it easier to reproduce the same effect without requiring every theatre to have the same understage structure.

The Korean production also used this circular platform. At first, I was slightly disappointed because the arrival of the platform itself seemed to announce, “The quick change will happen here.” In practice, however, it hardly reduced the impact of the transformation. I was deliberately staring at the scene through opera glasses and still failed to see where the black costume went. The illusion worked.

I also found another method used in a Disney spectacular. Instead of making the black dress disappear below the stage, the performer releases the front fastening herself and moves her body so that the black part is repositioned beneath the white costume. It was interesting to see completely different solutions to the same Elsa transformation depending on the production and venue.


Charlotte Theater and the understage

Elsa’s quick change brought back a question I have had about the Charlotte Theater for some time.

I have seen productions with relatively short runs use trapdoors and understage elevators to reproduce major staging effects: Beetlejuice at the LG SIGNATURE Hall at LG Arts Center, The Bridges of Madison County at BBCH Hall at Kwanglim Arts Center, and Memphis at Chungmu Arts Center. In contrast, I cannot remember seeing a production at the Charlotte Theater that made substantial use of the understage.

In Hadestown, the central elevator that is such an important element of the original production was not installed. Characters heading into the underworld walked up the stairs and disappeared through the back of the stage. The audience had to accept that they had gone down.

I was much more disappointed by Aladdin. Several effects involving trapdoors were removed and replaced with props or projections, which I felt diminished much of the Disney magic the production was trying to create. I particularly missed the moment when the entrance to the Cave of Wonders changes after a blackout to reveal its spectacular reverse side. The Genie’s first entrance, spinning as he rises from below the stage, was also gone. Of the various pieces of magic Aladdin tried to create, I felt that the Magic Carpet was about the only one that retained the full sense of wonder of the original.

Jafar’s series of costume changes was also performed on a platform with what looked rather like a fitting room behind him. Because the apparatus appeared first, it felt a little like announcing, “Here is where the magic trick will happen,” before performing it.

I had similar reservations about The Phantom of the Opera, including the Phantom’s disappearance after “Why So Silent?”

Of course, I cannot conclude from this that the Charlotte Theater itself is the problem. It primarily hosts large licensed productions, so many staging decisions may be determined by the producer and the design of the original production rather than by the theatre itself. A production may be designed from the beginning as a touring stage so that the same setup can travel to regional venues. Licensing conditions, production costs, and installation schedules may also be factors. On the other hand, Memphis used the understage extensively during its Seoul run at Chungmu Arts Center even though regional performances followed afterward.

This production of Frozen will run in Seoul for about seven and a half months before moving to the Dream Theatre in Busan. The Broadway Elsa quick change does not require a massive central elevator, only a small pit hole, so I had wondered whether they might use the understage this time. They instead used the touring production’s circular platform.

Still, I was not disappointed with Frozen in the way I had been with Aladdin. Elsa’s quick change remained effective on the platform, and the other major stage images and freezing effects worked very well. The stage was beautiful and fantastical.

One question remains. The Charlotte Theater was Korea’s first theatre built specifically for musicals. Why have I still never seen a production there use the understage?

The Charlotte Theater has announced plans to develop further as a producing theatre rather than simply a venue. I hope that will eventually give me a chance to see a production that makes full use of the theatre’s own stage capabilities.


And in the end, the actors

Still, the actors were what I enjoyed most.

When I saw Aladdin, I wished Min Kyung-ah had been given more to sing. There was no need to wish for that this time. Elsa had plenty of songs, and Min Kyung-ah made full use of them. Choi Ji-Hye, the other principal actors, and the ensemble were also very good.

The responsible Elsa remains queen and protects her kingdom, while the innocent Anna is free from the throne to choose the life and love she wants. On a bright, sparkling stage, the two sisters eventually find the places that suit each of them. It was a very Disney ending to a very Disney Frozen.


Stage and technical elements I looked up afterward

I looked up these materials after the performance because I was curious about how some of the stage effects worked. Rather than explaining every mechanism in the review, I am leaving the links here for future reference.

Sven the reindeer

https://youtu.be/XZGr4JWbN3E?si=9a18yLREB4-5GNBj&t=39
https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/02192020_frozen_132714.jpg?d=2040x1333
https://youtu.be/uEolWWwUv0I?si=GfX1LU8QP55YmWql&t=160

Elsa Quick Change
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CFNNFxyvyxU
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VLEDuwCbXmQ

4.7 million LEDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZunsOKr4eeU