Since the Disney animated musical Frozen premiered five years ago, the song "Let It Go" has been inescapable. Even the daughters of its songwriters were a bit tired of it.
"Like many people in our culture, there was a feeling of Frozen fatigue, if you will," says co-songwriter Kristen Anderson-Lopez.
Yet Anderson-Lopez — and her husband, Bobby Lopez — jumped at the chance to adapt it for the stage, because there seems to be an insatiable hunger for the story. Frozen is, after all, the highest-grossing animated film of all time. Now, the fairy-tale celebration of sisterhood has been turned into a $30 million Broadway musical — and it's virtually sold-out until the end of the year.
Director Michael Grandage says that's a bit of pressure.
"I went into it knowing that I have a huge responsibility not to let the people who know it very well down," he says. "And I think all that means is that you take that source material and you honor it."
That might sound easier said than done.
"When you choose a story for animation, you choose things that could not exist in the physical world," says co-songwriter Bobby Lopez. "You have to have a story that involves that stuff, because animation can do that so well. And then onstage, you're limited by gravity and things like that."
That was a challenge for Jennifer Lee, who co-directed the film and wrote the script to the theatrical version.
"We don't have the same special effects where it defies physics, but we have real human beings on the stage, which does a lot more," Lee says. "It affects us, I think, in a much deeper way. And I think theater — there's always a suspension of disbelief where you surrender to it."
The Broadway production does have Olaf the snowman and Sven the reindeer, recreated as human-sized puppets. And the big blizzard at the end is recreated by a swirling orchestra and chorus.
The two-act stage adaptation also gives the creative team more time to play with. They've added a dozen new songs, like "What Do You Know About Love?" for Princess Anna and Kristoff — the mountain man who she falls for as she goes on her quest to save her sister.
The writers wanted to create something that was not just a rehash of the movie or just for the little girls who show up at the theater dressed as the two sisters.
"We were not making your toddler's Frozen," says Kristen Andersen-Lopez. "We were making a sophisticated dignified adult psychological Frozen."
Bookwriter Jennifer Lee says they particularly wanted to give new songs to Elsa — the cursed Snow Queen — who's something of a secondary character in the movie.
"She has a song called 'Monster' that is really deep and really explores the fears of: Is she a monster?" Lee says. "Should she even exist anymore? You can't — you're not going to do that in a Disney animated film."
Existential problems aside, there's plenty onstage for the little girls (and boys) in the audience. And, if you're not suffering from Frozen fatigue, the writers are hard at work on a film sequel.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
