Even my icy heart melted at the sight of this charming Snow Queen
Polly Lister deservedly won a UK Theatre ‘best actress’ award in 2015 for her performance – at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick - as the overbearing hostess Beverly in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party.
Now, in a winter-tide tour de force captured at the Stephen Joseph Scarborough, she achieves the equivalent of hosting a party and playing all the guests. Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Snow Queen has been fashioned as a solo that calls on the 45-year-old actress from Redditch to switch roles with the abrupt speed usually associated with Government pandemic decision-making.
Since it was first published prior to Christmas in 1844, the story – one of the Danish fabulist’s longer ones – has enthralled readers and inspired many adaptations. Its chilly villainess, who rides a white sleigh, rules an ice-palace and kidnaps one of the child protagonists (a boy called Kai), is thought to have inspired CS Lewis. Whether or not it gave us Narnia, its vision of a world in which splinters of a broken mirror lodge in the eyes of people, freezing their hearts and making them see the worst in everything has an enduring allegorical power – and might almost be custom-made to describe the toxic slants of our social-media riven times.
Adapter Nick Lane and director Paul Robinson have opted neither for something that spells old-world hearthside storytelling nor brings the tale firmly into the modern-day. Instead, the emphasis is on the larger than life theatrical presence and shape-shifting ability of Lister herself. This is a Yorkshire yarn that’s being spun in Scarborough, and it’s up to those watching (harder I think online than it was for the audience in the theatre) to keep pace with Lister’s lustily energetic antics.
While I wished the piece had a more sophisticated (Scandinavian, perhaps) aesthetic when it comes to the puppetry (the technique here is more playing with dollies), there’s clearly a limit – given Covid - as to what could be done. If the overall approach veers too much into panto, her charm is savingly palpable.
Initially coming across as a female Caractacus Potts from Chitty, Lister, wearing inventor-goggles and a mischievous grin, singingly introduces herself as the Sorceress of Summer (sister of you know who) and causes explosions in her garden shed as she trifles with enchanted monkey powder. A grand white robe and wicked sneer conjure her imperious Christmas-hating sibling.
In a flurry of bobble-hat and duffel-coat donning, Kai is abducted, and Gerda – advised by her gruff gran (fake nose and glasses) - sets off to ‘t other Scarborough’, reached by a magic swing; “Give it some welly,” the girl is advised.
I’m clearly not the target audience (trapped-at-home kiddies) but even my icy heart melted at the sight of a disco-loving French hedgehog, a crow fixated with scatological poems (poo-ems) and the resentful Brummie reindeer brother of Rudolph. At an hour and 40 minutes, it affably kills some time, a small act of mercy at the moment.
Until Jan 31 (£12). www.sjt.uk.com/SJTathome
