REVIEW: AAODS Juniors manages to thaw even the coldest of hearts with its production of Frozen

IT’S always a pleasure to see innate talent taking its place at centre stage and it was a quality which in display in oodles at the Borough Theatre last week when the young members of AAODS Juniors pulled back the curtains on their latest production - Disney’s icy blockbuster Frozen.

With a whole generation of Anna and Elsa wannabes to appeal to this show was always going to be a sellout, with more fancy dress in the stalls than on the stage and a special appeal to wannabe Princesses to leave the singing to those on stage.

With such a familiar show and such high expectations, staging Frozen is a challenge for any company and one which AAODS lived up to, with the by now familiar combination of simple set and projection working well.

I’m still no fan of working to backing tracks on a full scale musical, but keeping in mind the restrictions of the Borough Theatre post renovation, there are few options for a show like Frozen and the fuller sound a track brings does have its advantages.

Of course set and sound notwithstanding a show like Frozen rides and falls on its central characters and without a strong Elsa and Anna the production faces being a flurry of sleet rather than a serious blizzard.

Fortunately with Violet Allaway and Olivia O’Gorman in these central roles AAODS landed on its feet, with Violet an ice cool Elsa and Olive displaying a rare talent for comedy as Anna, qualities echoed in the early part of the production Molly Hall and Charlotte Prosser as young Elsa and Anna.

This is by far an easy sing for any of the central characters and both Violet and Olivia showed they were more than capable of standing up to the challenge - Violet was more than a match for the showstopper ‘Let It Go’ both vocally and dramatically and while the centrepiece transformation was a bit of a damp squib the vocal climax made up for any momentary disappointment.

Equally Olivia excelled, making up for the lack of a solo number by absolutely delighting in her duets with Hans - well played by Oliver Powell and Kristoff, equally strongly played by Zion Tsvara.

Great performances also came from Sophia Brouns who acted, sang and mastered some difficult puppet work as Olaf, Phoebe Evans as Weselton, Tansy Newton as Bulda and an excellent Harri Evans in the dual role as Pabbie and Oaken who led in both Fixer Upper and Hygge - both excellent chorus numbers.

Some lovely cameos came from Daniel Stockholm as King Agnarr and Delilah Iris Jones as Queen Iduna, although special mention must go to puppeteer Evie Hollister who somehow managed to navigate her way around the stage beautifully controlling a quite enormous reindeer!

It’s always great to see a performance which shows off a cast working together as a complete ensemble from principals to well schooled chorus and its to the credit of the production team of Alys Le Moignan Williams, Meg Trinder and Helena Williams that they managed to achieve this and come up with a production to thaw even the hardest of hearts.