Stage
The Broadway musical "Frozen" opened on March 22, 2018, starring Caissie Levy as Elsa, the princess cursed with a cold touch.
BROADWAY TURNS MOVIES INTO stage musicals every day, it seems. But each adaptation is a particular challenge for the stage team, especially the scenic designers.
Christopher Oram, who did both the set and costume design for "Frozen," which opened in March at the St. James Theater, was asked how much (on a scale of 1 to 100) he wanted his work to look like the beloved 2013 animated movie.
"To look like? Zero percent," Oram said in an email interview from London. "To feel like? 100 percent."
Screen
"Frozen" opened in movie theaters in 2013 and won Oscars for best animated film and best original music.
The goal, he said, was first to show fans of the movie something that was comfortable and familiar, then to "surprise and delight."
A host of fantasy places in the stage production are tributes to Oram's award-winning stagecraft. One is revealed in Act II when Kristoff (Jelani Alladin), whose actual occupation is iceman, announces, in an awe-struck voice, "Now this is ice."
Just what is he seeing?
"Kristoff is standing in Elsa’s ice palace, which is a combination, and the culmination of, many different scenic techniques," Oram said.
Snowflakes
Elsa at home with a little fiberglass, a little video and a lot of Swarovski.
The palace is a combination of physical and virtual scenery, he said. Four of the pillars are cast translucent fiberglass with LEDs inside (to make them glow). The other six are content in the video wall. The idea is for the ice that Elsa creates to be "dynamic and varying." And it works.
"The centerpiece of the palace is a beautiful crystal curtain of snowflakes frozen in midair, made for us by Swarovski," Oram said, giving credit for its shimmer to Natasha Katz, the show's award-winning lighting designer.
Bridgework
Kristoff (Jelani Alladin) and Anna (Patti Murin) on their quest.
The 55-foot-long ice bridge, where Kristoff and Anna (Patti Murin) have a moment, is unique. It's "a very brilliant bit of delicate engineering by set builders PRG," Oram says, describing it as steel construction dressed with rope to make it feel like a rope suspension bridge. The vacu-formed icicles on it "suggest they froze horizontally at great speed as Elsa fled this way up the north mountain," he explained.
High Life
The rooms at Arendelle Castle have 31-foot ceilings and, presumably, sweeping Norwegian mountain views.
The interior scenes in "Frozen" have a special kind of grandeur. The ceilings in Arendelle Castle, where Elsa and Anna grow up, are 31 feet high -- which is what we'll all be demanding in our next Manhattan apartments.
Winning
Christopher Oram has won Tony Awards for "Red" (2010) and "Wolf Hall" (2015).
For logical reasons, Oram -- currently working on a London revival of "Red" -- likes being in charge of both costume and scenic design for the show (he's also done that for productions including "Red" and Broadway revivals of "Evita," "Hamlet"and "The Cripple of Inishmaan").
"The garments not only reflect the location but are actually connected to it visually and aesthetically," he said. "I find a lot of times when there are two separate designers, the worlds can feel in competition with each other, rather than in collaboration,
"It is all one world for me."
One World
Elsa, alone in a crowd but elegantly robed.
