A short review of Freezing at the Gladstone Theatre

We finally went to see Freezing at the Gladstone Theatre. It’s billed as a “witty, wintery family musical” and it certainly lived up to the billing.

It’s a pun-filled interactive show full running just over 90 minutes with an intermission.  The musical is set in the Snow Globe Kingdom, although it might as well be set in Ottawa for all of the references to Queensway traffic and corrupt politicians.  Most of the characters love winter and snow except for the bad guy, who’s building a weather machine to make it summer year-round.

We took our 7- and 9-year olds to the show and they LOVED it.  The acting and singing is great and there are plenty of jokes that the adults appreciated too. Comedic timing and overall direction (by Bob Lackey) was strong. The costumes were great too, full of creativity and detail.

Stand-out performances include Shelly Simester as Rubble the troll (picture a mangy mouse dressed in a green curtain and bath mat from the 1970s); Chad Connell as Krisco (a rapping, dancing ice harvester … we liked his parody of Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass”); and Gab Desmond as Gerda (a cross-dressing beauty queen with a heavy British accent).

The music lacked a bit of edge and power, and the jokes were a tad predictable, but overall it was a good show. Freezing continues until Sunday, January 4 at the Gladstone Theatre (Gladstone near Preston) with matinee and evening performances on Saturday and Sunday .

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