With gender stereotyping, bullying, and the ever advancing tech world being hot-button topics in our society right now, it’s even more important than ever that children’s theatre makers get the right mix of realism, escapism, entertainment and education in their creative offerings. 

After an impressive 20 years, KidzStuff theatre are no strangers to taking a traditional story, adding a modern twist to it and incorporating these important ingredients of challenging the norms. Their latest offering, Defrosted, is no exception.

Playwright Fingal Pollock takes inspiration from both the traditional Hans Christian Andersen story The Snow Queen and popular movies Frozen, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Moana,and proceeds to deconstruct (or defrost) the hero worship and princess myth, in favour of believing in oneself.

Defrosted’s main character, Lea (Cassandra Tse), is feeling upset and confused as her friend Becky doesn’t want to be her friend anymore and the ice magic powers of the her heroine the Snow Queen (Greer Philips) have failed while opening the winter festival. Even though Lea feels let down, she needs to protect her idol from being exposed and humiliated by unscrupulous reporter Rex Coop – who gets the scoop (Manuel Solomon)

This story is a journey of self-discovery, disguised as a journey to help another.

With the help from characters such as The Little Mermaid, Belle (both played by Greer Philips) and Maui (Manuel Solomon), Lea learns valuable lessons of mindfulness, being adaptable to change and to follow your heart. Good reminders to us all.

Right from the song playing as we enter the theatre space – ‘The Princess who Saved Herself’ by Jonathan Coulton – the scene is being set to confront the outdated template of ‘the damsel in distress who needs rescuing’ that little girls have aspired to for so many years.

The actors all play their different roles with strong character and caricature as needed and Cassandra Tse leads the songs with beautiful vocal clarity. I agree with my daughter that the Te Reo Welcome song to Maui is a highlight and this exchange between Maui and Lea has heartfelt power.

The adlibs with the audience are managed well and I especially love the answers to the question, “What are you going to be when you get older?” which again break down the aforementioned stereotypes with “a scientist”, “an inventor”, “police” and “a grown up!” 

This Kidzstuff cast led by director Craig Geenty succeed in ticking the right boxes of triggering the imagination, using well-known characters and familiar stories and scenarios which the audience, whether young or old, can relate to, while adding in lots of fun participation, the obligatory ‘poop’ joke and enough topical local commentary to get the adults chuckling too. 

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