FROZEN

Five fabulous lead performances elevate 5-Star Theatrical’s big-cast production of Disney’s Frozen, though probably not enough to be worth shelling out big bucks for a ticket given its rather lackluster production design and hundreds of chatty, fidgety preschool audience members not old enough to sit still for two hours.

Frozen The Broadway Musical expands upon its 90-or-so-minute-long source material with new songs (by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) and new scenes (book by Frozen screenwriter Jennifer Lee) that deepen and darken the relationship between sister heroines torn apart by one sister’s magic abilities that turn out to be more curse than gift.

 We first meet princesses Elsa and Anna as their preteen selves (precocious charmers Catherine Last and Amy Sorensen), the two siblings living a pampered life in the fairytale kingdom of Arendelle.

Unfortunately for the two young royals, Elsa’s magical power to freeze anything or anyone backfires when she accidentally ices Anna from the neck up, though fortunately for the frozen lass, the girls’ parents King Agnarr (Richie Ferris) and Queen Iduna (Eleen Hsu-Wentland) manage with the aid of a certain Grand Pabbie (Ceron Jones) to have the spell reversed.

Realizing that Elsa’s superhuman gift could eventually wreak even more havoc upon her family and subjects, King Agnarr sequesters grownup Elsa (Monika Peña) in her own secluded wing of the castle, the better to shield Anna (Ellie Smith) from being entirely turned into ice.

And this is just the beginning of Frozen’s tale of romance (Frankie Zabilka’s Prince Hans Of The Southern Isles arrives to woo Anna) and intrigue (Travis Joe Dixon’s weaselly Duke of Weselton plots to have Anna as his own).

 There’s also adventure (provided by the arrival of Sawyer Patterson’s ice-harvesting Kristoff and his reindeer sidekick Sven), whimsy (Landen Starkman’s snowman Olaf dreams of summering at the beach), and Javier Garcia’s amusing turn as sauna owner Oaken extolling the wacky pleasures of “Hygge.”

Is it all a bit of a hodgepodge of genres and tones? Yes.

Does Elsa’s “Let It Go” come seemingly out of nowhere simply because Act One must end with a great-big-voiced bang? Yes.

Are Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez’s new songs mostly not nearly as memorable as the ones they wrote for the movie? Yes.

 But none of this matters much when given a production the caliber of its Broadway, National Tour, and recent La Mirada Theatre incarnations.

Unfortunately, this is not so much the case at 5-Star, where production design elements are not what you’d expect from a production whose orchestra seats go for a hundred dollars or more, with fidgety preschool-aged kids grown restless and chatty throughout most of the dialog sequences and only quieting down when Olaf the Snowman or Sven the Reindeer are the center of attention.

On a much more positive note, the gorgeously voiced, dramatically gifted Peña adds Elsa to her growing list of memorable star turns, and the deliciously goofy and utterly enchanting Smith makes it two in a row following her sizzling breakout performance in Bonnie & Clyde.

Director Yvette Lawrence also brings out the best from Zabilka, whose Prince Hans is everything a princess dreaming of true love could wish for; from Starkman, who steals every scene he’s in as the cutest and cuddliest of Snowmen; from Patterson, who’s got Broadway leading man written all over him as the strikingly handsome, salt-of-the-earth Kristoff; and though and we may never catch a glimpse of Sebastian Guerrero inside Sven’s reindeer suit, he does some four-legged scene-stealing of his own.

Completing the main featured cast, Ceron Jones (Pabbie) and Jodi Marks (Bulda) lead a rousing “Fixer Upper,” joined by Frozen’s hard-working ensemble—Amanda Aceves-Lopez, Melissa Musial, Aaron Michael-Rees Camitses, Jeff Garrido, Luc Clopton, Anjelika “Jelly” Chun, Chloe Johnson, Lielle Kaidar, Micah Nicholson, Rasha Willes Samaha, Matthew Smith, and Spencer Williams*.

Choreographer Cheryl Baxter scores points for several big production numbers, though I was majorly bummed that what I fully expected to be one of the biggest and best (“In Summer”) got downsized to an Olaf solo at 5-Star.

Anthony Lucca provides topnotch music direction throughout, and the pit orchestra he conducts sounds Broadway fabulous.

Still, given that tickets start at about $50 and go up as high as $149, audiences have every reason to be disappointed at not being given anything near the spectacular production design seen last month at the La Mirada Theatre for similarly priced tickets. (Production stills make 5-Star’s look better than it actually does when viewed from the back half of the orchestra section.)

On the plus side, Brandon Baruch’s lighting design mixes the dramatic and the colorful, and Jonathan A. Burke’s sound design does its best to ensure we hear voices clearly, though perhaps not clearly enough at a noisy kiddie matinee.

Projection designer Nicholas Santiago, hair/wig designer Luis Martinez, and prop designer Alex Choate complete the design team.

 Noelle Raffy is wardrobe supervisor. Cameron J. Turner is production stage manager and Gavin Lattimer is assistant stage manager. Casting is by Michael Donovan Casting. David Elzer is publicist.

Were Frozen specifically written for a preschool audience (like TYA shows at the Pasadena Playhouse or South Coast Repertory), or had I not just seen it staged Broadway-caliber only  month earlier, you might not hear me carping about the less-than-optimal theatergoing experience I had at the Fred Kavli Theatre.

Frozen’s five emerging stars dazzled me on Sunday. The 5-Star Theatricals production they dazzled in not so much.

*Youth ensemble: Zander Chin, Ava Giselle Field, Charlee Marie, Madison North, Conner Noson, Sophia Sedik

5-Star Theatricals, 2100 Thousand Oaks Boulevard, Thousand Oaks.
www.5startheatricals.com

–Steven Stanley
July 13, 2025
Photos: Veronica Slavin

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

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