Collin Baja as Sven and F. Michael Haynie as Olaf in Frozen North American Tour. Photo by Deen van Meer.
A cool wind brought the far-off kingdom of Arendelle to Houston as Disney’s Frozen arrived as part of Broadway at the Hobby Center’s 2021-2022 season. Children of all ages (and the child in all of us) will enjoy this beautiful production of the (now) classic Disney film. In front of a full house with many excited kids singing along, Lauren Nichole Chapman (Anna) and Caroline Bowman (Else) belted out classics such as “Love Is an Open Door” and “Let It Go”. If you are looking for an air-conditioned family outing this summer, take your whole family to the Hobby Center for a performance of Frozen before the skies clear and the Scandinavian winter wonderland heads to its next destination. Frozen, with music and lyrics by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, kept many of the top songs from the original movie, while adding new songs and dialogue to keep the show different enough that it is not an exact copy of the film. The story-line is the same as the original, but many who have seen the film should enjoy the changes made for this production. While I personally enjoyed some of the over-the-top production numbers in other Disney hit musicals (think “Be Our Guest” in Beauty and the Beast), Frozen kept their most famous number “Let It Go” more scaled back with only glittery sets and lights in order to keep the focus on Bowman’s beautiful belting vocals. Although Anna remarks that she is “not an heir, just a spare”, her voice was anything but spare in the production. Chapman was a standout in every song she had, solo or otherwise. F Michael Haynie, playing Olaf the lovable and naïve snowman, gave a great performance of “Summer”, his hilarious ballad about his favorite season. Rounding out the standout performers in Frozen, the young Anna and Elsa, played by real-life sisters Victoria Hope Chan and Natalie Hope Chan, opened the show with their beautiful renditions of “A Little Bit of You” and “Do You Want to Build a Snowman”.
Disney’s Frozen is on-stage at the Hobby Center through July 17th. For more information about Broadway at the Hobby Center and the recently announced 2022-2023 season, please visit houston.broadway.com. For more Broadway updates, tune into my KTRU specialty show “Showstoppers” weekly on Sundays from 1:45 to 2:45 pm on air and online at ktru.org.
