The Snow Queen

Dir. Frank Galati. With Cheryl Lynn Bruce, Mattie Hawkinson, Andrew Keltz.If Hans Christian Andersen was a nagging nuisance to novelist Charles Dickens (by all accounts he was), how do you think Dickens would cotton to the news that Andersen is edging in on his place as the premier dark storyteller of the winter holidays? The Snow Queen, Smith and Galati’s spare and lovely new Andersen musical, has been in gestation for over a decade. And although the seeds for its sound were sewn in folky Smith’s career-high 1970s (the sound that fueled concept-musical albums by Harry Nilsson, pre-bland Andrew Lloyd Webber and Marlo Thomas and pals), the subsequent years have done nothing to dampen its resolutely hippy-dippy spirit. This team never adds artificial sweetener to Andersen’s pointedly icy story, and the result, conversely, is the season’s warmest surprise.

The story of two Danish childhood friends who get separated when one is seduced by the titular frozen matriarch, Andersen’s tale is a fine match for Smith’s unapologetic folk melodies and honey-drenched harmonies. (The band’s haunting, finely aged voices do the trick.) A beautifully suggestive staging—Galati uses only scrolling parchment panels and Meredith Miller’s sly puppets—reminds us why his less-is-more style is often emulated. Hawkinson, effortlessly charismatic as young Gerda, pulls the show through its occasionally overlong moments (we’d shave 15 minutes and the intermission). And while Snow Queen’s jivey style and commercial potential would be tempting to exploit into something bigger, it never advertises its own grooviness or glosses over its moodiness. That’s the nicest present we’ve gotten this holiday.—Christopher Piatt