I Saw Frozen the Musical Alone
And I had a great time | Popfly | Vol. 2 Iss. 2
Two Sundays ago I went to the Kennedy Center, by myself, in the rain, in a homemade dress, to see the stage version of Frozen. This was Spinster Behavior, and there were definitely moments where I looked at myself and thought “is this sad?” But nothing beats a good show. And also, part of the theatre kid ethos is to have absolutely no shame. So I’m going to own it and go into excruciating detail about my adventure.
Transportation
The Kennedy Center is hard to get to. Now, this is only by DC standards, where we’re incredibly lucky to live in a fifteen minute city. (My favorite movie theater and my least favorite movie theater are both a 30 minute walk. For some reason, though, my favorite feels closer. To the point where I sometimes take the bus to the one I like less, even though I happily walk to the good one.)
A person can drive the Kennedy Center, which if traffic is behaving takes 15 minutes. However, traffic in DC rarely behaves, plus parking costs $25. Also, I hate driving in DC. If I’m owning the weirdness of this story, I must admit that part of my walking is because it’s healthy and the city is beautiful, and the other part of my walking is because every street here is a one way and a tunnel and also everyone drives like they’re trying to make it to the hospital where their wife is having a baby. (Congratulations to them and to their wife.)
A person could also walk to the Kennedy Center but it would take well over an hour, and let’s not be ridiculous.
Which leaves public transportation. I honestly love the metro. Having grown up in a city with very little public transit, it’s such a wonder to have trains that (generally) show up every five minutes and (generally) take you to most places in the city. I love the bus less, but it works. The Kennedy Center is roughly a fifteen minute walk from the nearest metro stop. I know this is, in other parts of the country, a crazy good deal. In DC it feels like a lot.
Especially when it’s raining. And cold.
Which brings us to two Sundays ago. Because it was raining and cold, I decided to take the bus. The bus, you see, leaves from one block from our apartment, rather than ten minutes away at the metro stop. I figured the bus would take the same amount of time and save some getting wet at the beginning. I planned my route on Google Maps and set out.
Except that Google Maps lies. It actually has no earthly idea when a bus will come, and it makes up numbers. So when I got to the bus stop at what I thought was the appointed time, the actual bus clock said it would not come for half an hour.
So instead I set off to walk ten minutes to the metro in a cold rain. My glasses got wet. Water soaked through my boots and got my socks wet. The front of my hair got wet.
Also, the Kennedy Center isn’t on our line, so I had to switch from Red to Blue, and again, I know this is very much a good public transit problem, but it’s also annoying.
The Fashion
Before I realized it was raining, I put on this very cute pink pea coat I thrifted, along with my new blue dress and my boots. And then I took one look at the weather and switched to a less cute and somehow also not very waterproof raincoat. (I have since ordered waterproofing spray to try and improve the situation.)
I am proud to have made a dress at all. The dress, however, is a little too big in the bodice so I worried I would accidentally flash children when I was sitting down. Also, it was cotton and got wet very quickly in the rain. Plus the aforementioned boot soaking.
Anyway, I was misdressed for this event anyway because I was not a child and not wearing one of the two acceptable outfits:
A frozen costume, either from Disney or an off brand Snow Queen situation. (A lot more Elsas than Annas, it looked like.)
Mary-Janes and tights.
There’s also a secret third option for adults, which I will call Rich Mom.
Cashmere sweater, gold jewelry.
Oops you got it wrong there’s also a secret fourth option, which I will call Enthusiastic Dad.
A blue shirt, to sort of match your daughter’s Elsa costume.
Again, I didn’t wear any of these options. I wore my homemade dress and my non-waterproof raincoat. But at least I didn’t wear blue sequins, which I did see at least one adult wearing.
The Experience
Despite my bus miscalculation, I was pretty early for the show, so I bought myself a black and white cookie and a “Reindeer Punch” mocktail that I’m pretty sure was just a Shirley Temple. For this sugar high snack I paid $26, which at least seemed like a better deal than the parking would have been. (Being a bartender at the concessions stand of Frozen the Musical looked like an awful job. Props to that lady.)
I also had time to people watch, especially as children in hoop skirts and plastic tiaras went through the metal detectors. I also saw at least one mom make a kid take a picture (of the mom).
A kid in the row front of me had an Apple Watch. I am terrible at guessing the ages of children, but my best estimate is that she was, at the oldest, a very small middle schooler.
There was at least one adult woman in a tiara.
There were really so many children. Which makes sense. My guess is that it was probably a holiday gift for most of them. (As it was for me!)
This is probably as good a time as any to say that I invited Will to come with me to see Frozen the Musical, which I thought he might say yes to because of the time we went to see Disney on Ice together. However, he is not as much of a fan of Frozen as I am, plus he thought there would be a lot of children. Plus again he was planning to drive to the Eastern Shore to watch back to back basketball games, but at the last minute he decided the weather was not ideal for a trip that would, on a good weather day, including walking at the beach. But at that point it was too late to get another ticket to Frozen.
The Show
It was so good guys.
They use a lot of projections/lights and musical cues for the snow and ice magic. There was also occasional confetti and glitter, but I imagine for safety reasons and also annoying the stage manager reasons, that has to be pretty limited.
Probably the biggest of these snow moments is “Let it Go”, and maybe this ups the sadness factor but I definitely cried a little. Idina Menzel left some very big shoes to fill and the tour actor did an incredible job.
I understand why Disney wanted to do a stage production of Frozen, because this story basically prints money, but if you think about it, it’s a weird one to try and do onstage! And watching this production, they made everything work.
Olaf the Snowman is done as a puppet with the actor visible and in costume behind him. Very cute, and really effective to be able to watch the puppet and the performer at the same time.
Sven the Reindeer is an actor in a costume, and honestly you just have to watch the video:
This looks so good on stage and also apparently the Broadway performers were in physical therapy three times a week because it’s also crazy hard on your body.
There are kids in the beginning as the young Anna and Elsa, and then one of them at least comes back as ensemble later. I’ve seen touring shows with kids before but never really read about what that life is like. I imagine it’s really cool and also kind of a weird and hard way to grow up.
The biggest change the show made story wise was to not have the entire ensemble dress up as rocks. Kristoff’s family, in this version, are human beings instead of rocks. Which like, not that anthropomorphic rocks couldn’t raise a human child, but this version works too.
The stage version also adds quite a few songs, all of which were great. Honestly I didn’t write anything down about them, and you can go and look up the cast recording if you want. But I am pro songs.
I’m also just pro musicals in general and pro Frozen the Musical in particular. The dancing was awesome. The costumes were gorgeous. (They replicated Elsa’s “Let It Go” dress from the movie, but then later in the show she had a pants and boots version that honestly might have been cooler.) Big points to the whole ensemble, who were doing great work.
Post-Show
After the show I went out to the lobby to realize that the weather had somehow gotten worse. I gave up and called a Lyft, which was still cheaper than parking and meant I didn’t have to spend twenty minutes walking in a cold rain.
It also meant I hung out in the lobby a while longer, while a little girl in a torn Elsa dress was using the ripped part as a cape. She would spin around and sing “Let It Go” to herself.
And here’s the thing, I’ve decided it was not sad to go see a wonderful show alone. I had a great time. I wore a dress I’m really proud of having made. I got a cookie. And in my heart, I still feel a little like the kid in the torn dress, pretending it’s a cape.
What Else?
Watching
I went to see Anyone But You. It is not very good. It’s ostensibly an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, but that part mostly just made me mad. Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell do not have chemistry, and their characters are also just the worst people in any room. (Well, second worst if you count when the parents bring one daughter’s ex-boyfriend to the other daughter’s wedding on false pretenses WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE.) Did I have a good time watching it? Yes. Did I, when presented with the opportunity, go see it again? Absolutely not. The script is bad, the casting is bad, the understanding of how emergency services work is, also, intentionally bad. I had to keep taking off my glasses to demonstration my exasperation.
I also went to see Mean Girls, which is an adaptation of a musical I’ve seen based on a movie I’ve also seen, and it was awesome. Very fun, very pink. I already had “Revenge Party” stuck in my head before I went, and seeing the movie did not help.
I also watched She Came to Me at home after having missed it at the theater last year. That is a weird movie. I enjoyed it a lot, but I did not understand what I was getting into.
Cooking
Last week I made this recipe for scallops with sweet potatoes and greens, and it was delicious.
Then this week to use up leftover sweet potato from the scallops recipe, I made this sweet potato hash. It definitely looks like just a pile of vegetables, but it turned out to also be delicious. And we’re still not out of sweet potatoes.
Reading
Two nights ago I read all of Edith Warton’s Ethan Frome, which I’d never read before. I didn’t know what to expect but I enjoyed it a lot. I’m now setting out with a Douglas Adams novel I didn’t know existed. Once I got home from the library I realized it’s the second in a series, but I’m hopeful that the first book won’t matter much.