Defrosted

★★★
kids review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
Published 23 Aug 2015
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39658 original

We are in the fjords of Norway, our presenter Cat informs us. There are fjords. And there is Norway. And there is... Well, there are fjords. And there is Norway. And the finer details may get lost, but that’s okay.

Defrosted isn’t a take on Frozen as much as it jumps off the themes of the film – or at least the theme of snow. Songs are repurposed: ‘Love Is An Open Door’ becomes ‘Close the Freezer Door’; there are many things you may want to build other than a snowman. But largely, the source film is just a launching pad for a whole host of clowning.

And it’s in this that the work is at its best. Cat and her sidekick Nicko ham themselves up to their audience within an inch of their lives. Silly dances meet silly walks with silly faces. These silly faces become adorned with silly glasses and silly teeth. Metal plates are run into, again and again, every time to squeals of delight. 

In the audience, most of the children are too young to understand the parodies of Frozen songs the pair create, and these scenes play rather awkwardly: the audience know and love the movie enough to know something’s not quite right, but they can’t grasp the joke.

Still, for most, the clowning is enough. And, in the final scene, for the children who take to the stage to sing ‘Let It Go’ under a snow machine, that moment is everything.