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Newspaper Articles 
Theater review: 'The Snow Queen' is a thing of beauty 
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Published: March 3, 2002
By Dominic P. Papatola
The Children's Theatre Company's new adaptation of "The Snow Queen" is a magnificent synthesis of vision and execution; a beautiful and breathtaking experience to behold.
Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of friendship and determination springs to vibrant new life through an alchemic partnership among its creators. Ruth MacKenzie wrote the adaptation, and wraps it in a score of her own Scandinavian-flavored music that - cranked out by a crackerjack seven-piece orchestra led by Dick Hensold - sometimes sounds folky, sometimes liturgical, sometimes spine-tingling ethereal and always gorgeous.
Michael Sommers co-directs and is responsible for the scenic design: a melange of Andersen's paper cut-outs and his own whimsical puppets and skewed-perspective set pieces - doghouse-sized homes from which two full-sized people emerge. Peter Brosius, CTC's artistic director, is the other co-director, contributing his unstinting belief that theater for children can be muscular yet gentle, unblinking yet hopeful, intelligent yet accessible.
Each of these three artists has created some excellent work in recent years, but in collaboration, the trio is able to soar still higher. MacKenzie, whose best-known stage work is "Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden," doesn't water down the sometimes-dissonant harmonics of her melodies, but she finds a more personal scale for the music that's more appropriate for young audiences.
Her script is unpretentious and jangles with just the right amount of poetry. And appearing as the Snow Queen herself, MacKenzie does the production yet another favor by contributing a cold, liquidly evil performance and her crisp, textured voice.
The story of "The Snow Queen" centers on her mirror, in which the world is reflected as its opposite - beauty reflects as ugliness, for example, and friendship as hatred. When the mirror is shattered, a shard enters the eye of a young boy named Kai. This causes him to look at his best friend, Gerda, through uncharitable vision, and eventually to abandon her for the Snow Queen. Gerda sets off on an epic journey to rescue her friend, meeting various animal and human characters along the way.
Britta Ollmann, a young performer who has distinguished herself in a number of CTC productions in recent seasons, plays Gerta with verve and sensitivity - an extraordinary heroine constructed of everyday virtues and vices from fidelity to frustration.
One of her guides is a crow, wonderfully anthropomorphized by Bradley Greenwald. His strutting, pecking performance is a skilled and swift bit of acting. And even though local audiences know Greenwald is an operatically trained singer - and a darn fine one at that - it still feels like a delightful surprise when he opens up to deliver some of the best songs of the show.
There are roadblocks in Gerda's way to Kai, too. A flower lady, rendered with the just-right air of the flibbertigibbet by Diane Benjamin-Hill, tries to seduce her with a life of comfort and beauty. A robber girl, Emily Zimmer, in a dead-on performance as a foot-stomping brat, tries to force her to stay.
But Gerda persists and finally wins back her friend. It's a happy ending for the children but an object lesson as well: In an age when everything from lighters and computers to values and relationships seems designed for obsolescence, perseverance has become an underrated value. "The Snow Queen" clearly shows the small ones - and those who brought them to the theater - that, while staying with what you believe is seldom easy, it's a worthwhile journey and a powerfully rewarding destination.
Copyright 2002 St. Paul Pioneer Press.
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