Theatre review: The Snow Queen, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
The Snow Queen, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh ***
What does a good Christmas show need? It needs a strong, magical story well and clearly told, a design that lives and breathes the meaning of that story through space and colour, a strong sense of adventure with high stakes, and plenty of room for humour, play and fun, between the more driven narrative passages.
The balance among those elements varies, of course, depending on how close the show is to full-on pantomime; but if you’re interested in seeing a seasonal show to which the whole concept of balance, coherence, simplicity and clarity is a stranger, then you could do worse than invest in a ticket for Morna Young’s new adaptation of Snow Queen, at the Lyceum in Edinburgh.
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Not so much a dog’s dinner as a chaotic unicorn's breakfast of a show, this latest version of Hans Christian Andersen’s magnificent tale, directed by the usually excellent Cora Bissett, is so littered with inexplicable decisions that it’s difficult to know where to start. To set the opening of the story in Edinburgh is one thing, and reasonable enough; to set it in in Edinburgh in 1890, though, makes no sense at all, unless it is to to make space for patronising bursts of pasted-on Scots language that sound like one of those desperate, disempowering lists of couthy terms your granny might have known.
Then there is Emily James’s set, which looks fabulous, but mirrors the shape and appearance of the Lyceum auditorium for no legible reason at all, since the whole slightly awkward urban structure, lit and relit in garish colours, can only get in the way of Gerda’s magical journey through forests and fjords to the far north. When Gerda meets the Robber Girl, and is offered a magical animal friend to carry her on her journey, it’s not Andersen’s reindeer – a magnificent northern beast, hugely resonant of everything from our current climate crisis to Christmas itself – but a shriekingly camp pink unicorn called Hamish, who spends the rest of the story on the lookout for casual sexual encounters.
And then there is the story itself, tottering under the weight of everything but the kitchen sink in terms of Celtic mythology that personifies the four seasons as powerful goddesses, the seagoing wisdom of our northern coasts, a brief intervention by the Northern Lights, and a messy structure that has the excellent Wendy Seager, as an ancient Scots-speaking Seer, offering long and wordy final-act explanations of the meaning of Gerda’s journey that should have been clear from the action long before.
The show’s excellent 11-strong cast naturally make the best they can of this rag-bag of material, which is certainly vivid, sometimes spectacular, and full of entertaining fragments. Rosie Graham’s sturdy and determined Gerda is lovely throughout, Richard Conlon is heroic in his efforts to create some panto fun around the character of Hamish, Naomi Stirrat is in fine form as both the Robber Girl Senga and the imprisoned goddess of spring; and if Finn Anderson’s score has some ugly moments, and sadly lacks a sense of magic, it also features several fine songs, including a rousing anthem called Quines Gonna Fight, and a powerful closing number, After The Battle.
In 2023, though, there’s no excuse for producing a Snow Queen that makes such a poor job of linking this wintry story about the horror of climate change to the equal and opposite challenge we face today, and which so fails to embrace the sheer power of its imagery. It’s a lively show, with plenty to enjoy; but it lacks the beauty, the simplicity, and the deep, haunting resonance of Anderson’s great tale, to an extent that is hard to forgive.
Until 31 December