This year’s Christmas show by the Rose Theatre Kingston, directed and written by Ciaran McConville, is an adaption of the classic story, The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. The story is about a girl called Gerda (Parisa Shahmir) and one of her close friends, Kai (Jack Wolfe) who have to fight to save the world from the Snow Queen and eternal winter.
The action starts in a town called Evergreen where the elves are preparing gifts for Christmas, but one young girl called Joy, portrayed mischievously by Emily Porter finds a mysterious shard mirror which causes some of her older elf friends to recount the tale of how the mirror came about. I thought that this was a creative and clever way to tell the story of Gerda and Kai, as the story is addressed to Joy on stage as well as the audience. Therefore the audience felt they could empathise with some of the characters, to whom this story was also new, and therefore more easily engaged.
A special feature of previous years’ Rose Christmas productions has been the magical snow showers which have cascaded onto the audience during the performance, especially delighting the younger children who often sat on cushion seats in the pit area. No longer having the pit seating meant that they couldn’t sprinkle the ‘snow’ onto the audience, which was a slight shame, but it was a relief to see they had not decided to scrap the snow shower as a handed a certain festive feel to the finale.
The original songs written Eamonn O’Dwyer were powerful with lots of strong solos. I especially liked Progress, a song lead by Kai, about his dad’s less than successful inventions, which had some clever pyrotechnics that made it both funny yet moving at the same time.
The performance which I saw of “The Snow Queen” was made special by the way in which younger cast members form the Rose Youth Theatre carried up the show, keeping the intensity high and the audience engaged. That said, credit where it’s due; Jack Wolfe and Parisa Shahmir played Kai and Gerda convincingly with strong voices and amazing emotion. They conveyed their strong emotions towards each other and other characters. Parisa carried the story of her journey as her energy never faded and Jack supplied emotion and a switch in feelings. The pace and context of the story was well managed by the on-stage trio of narrators (Maisie Rodford, Jacob Towey and Daisy Tucker). But Bancu, led by Francis Redfern, stole the show with his amazing comic timing and animated voice. He made the audience laugh till they had stiches. Bancu, the reindeer, was a puppet which was pulled of amazingly. Also, Millie Brownhill gave an emotional and compelling performance as Edda which was particularly engaging and moved the audience with her bravery.
Whether you are a grandfather or a granddaughter I’m sure that audiences of all ages will delight in this year’s amazing story telling and engaging show at the Rose theatre in Kingston
