Intelligent design

TOTAL BODY OVERHAUL Michael Smith’s folkie tunes are the staple ingredient in Victory Gardens’ mellow-groovy new musical The Snow Queen (see Resident companies). But without the puppets designed and rendered by Blair Thomas, Meredith Miller and Ben T. Matchstick, the show would be little more than a staged concert of a concept album. They can be chilly and haunting realizations of Hans Christian Andersen’s wintry world, like the ten-foot apparition of the titular empress. Or they can be endlessly playful, like the bored princess character (pictured), whose flowy, outsize puppet body lounges on a love seat while actor Kat Eggleston, left, supplies the head, voice and left arm. The aforementioned puppeteers bring their notably dark sensibilities to the project, making the show tantalizing for grown-ups, but they never forget to engage young audiences with spirited surprises.—Christopher Piatt