Last year as a Christmas treat we took ourselves off to Upfront Puppet Theatre again for their show “The Snow Queen”.

I had seen some of the puppets from this on display in a cabinet on a previous visit, (CLICK HERE for the previous post) but had not actually seen the show before.

My kids are both big fans of Disney’s “Frozen” films and I thought it would be interesting for them to see this puppet play which was closer to the original “Snow Queen” story. I had some very fond memories of film and TV adaptations of this story from my childhood so having seen John’s adaptation of Pinocchio (a very faithful adaptation of the original Pinocchio story), I was interested to see what he would do with this traditional tale.

I was extremely impressed with this show. The music was hugely atmospheric (particularly the jarring, uncanny music for the appearances of the Snow Queen) and helped to make the performance very exciting and immersive.

A screen at the front of the stage was used with front projections of snow and trees etc. at various points in the show. This was particularly effective for the sequence where Gerda was travelling in a carriage and we could see the carriage through the screen but an illusion of movement was created by the moving projections as well.

I was also impressed with the way the mechanism for showing the boat travelling on the river which worked very nicely with no technical hitches to distract from the story telling.

As always the show made excellent use of the turntable mechanism on the stage for scene changes and artful and dramatic use of the good old smoke machine as well. John’s puppets and sets were very well made too with excellent use of textures (reflective eyes for the Snow Queen etc.)

The show used a combination of rod and string puppets (with rod puppets appearing from the pit at the front of the stage and marionettes for the main staging further back) and achieved various transitions by having multiple puppet versions of the characters, e.g. Gerda on foot and Gerda mounted on the deer. Others however, were achieved through sheer skill (Kai mounting the Snow Queen’s sleigh and flying away).

Unusually for one of Upfront’s shows the puppeteers were on view (dressed in black so as not to distract from the puppets). I say unusually as the current stage has a bridge where the puppeteers can perform out of sight, (though of course for their cabaret puppets from Stanelli’s Super Circus they do perform in view as well.

John explained afterwards that the reason for this is that it is one of their older productions from when they had a smaller theatre space in one of the barn buildings and the puppets sets etc. had shorter strings for this reason.

I wondered when I was watching it if the reason the production was so excellent and well polished in terms of the performance was because the shorter strings gave better control, but on reflection it must have been at least partially that is because they have performed it a lot more times than some of the newer productions that were, perhaps, still being perfected.

My two kids (age 3 and 5) were totally absorbed from beginning to end and Miranda, (as seems to be her habit when reaching the end of a live show that she has enjoyed) said that she wanted to watch it again as soon as we reached the end. Anthony also gave it high praise, though I sadly can’t remember his exact words.

To sum up, I would say that this show was very effective dramatically and technically and made for mesmerising, spectacular viewing. I would recommend anyone who hasn’t seen it before to do so the very next time it is being shown and indeed I would recommend a visit to any show or exhibition here as the visitor experience is excellent with lovely toilets (including baby change facilities) and fantastic food in the vegetarian cafe. A real treat.