Frozen songwriters reveal family secret behind fairytale success
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Bobby Lopez have written hit songs for the Frozen movie and the musical, coming to Brisbane. The talented duo reveal the secret to Frozen’s success.
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It’s not their whole life but for Academy Award-winning songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and husband Bobby Lopez the Disney musical Frozen has been a passion for nearly a decade.
It started with the hit 2013 movie which they wrote seven and a half songs for (Reindeers Are Better Than People is considered only half a song).
One of those songs, Let It Go, became a huge international hit for musical theatre star Idina Menzel and that song is still a touchstone for a generation. Or an earworm, depending on your perspective.
There is a vast audience out there of children and adults who could sing that song for you at the drop of a hat.
The Lopezes love that and when I speak to them from their home in New York they are happy to chat about Frozen yet again. They’ve been doing it for a while, being, in a sense, the godparents of the franchise.
“We never get tired of talking about it,” Bobby says.
“We’ve loved exploring the characters and working on the sequel to the original movie and then the musical. Lately there’s been a lot less to do with Frozen because it’s out there in the world and on stage and we have appreciated the chance to move on. But when something like Frozen happens to you there’s still an obligation.”
They have, they say, enjoyed watching on from afar, as the Australian production has taken to the stage in Sydney and Melbourne and soon Brisbane.
Okay, so it has been hampered by lockdowns and restrictions but it has gone on and Australian audiences have been wildly enthusiastic.
“The main headline out of that for us was that at the time when it opened in Australia it was the only production happening anywhere,” Bobby says.
“It was a light in the darkness, an inspiration to know that somewhere out there in the world it was soldiering on.
“We would have loved to have been there to see that and share that but of course we couldn’t go. One day we will get to Australia. The first time we were meant to come we were having a baby. I couldn’t make it for Book of Mormon (Bobby co-wrote that groundbreaking show) and then there was the pandemic. One day we will make it.”
They are thrilled to hear about the imminent Brisbane season, which opens at QPAC on February 10.
Kristen says she’s very impressed by the Australian cast that features Queensland’s own Courtney Monsma as Anna, Jemma Rix in the role of Elsa, Matt Lee as Olaf, Thomas McGuane as Hans and Sean Sinclair as Kristoff. Aljin Abella plays Weselton and sharing the role of Sven is Jonathan MacMillan and Lochie McIntyre.
“The Australian cast is wonderful,” Kristen says.
“The leads have a wonderful bond and I think there’s actually something a little Australian about Anna. She’s warm and gung-ho and up for anything and everything.”
The 2013 Disney movie, a computer-animated musical fantasy produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Disney Pictures (the company’s 53rd animated feature film) was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen.
The movie is quite different and the musical is also its own creation.
The story centres on the relationship between two sisters who are princesses, Elsa and Anna. Elsa has magic powers to freeze objects and people, a power she does not know how to control.
When she inherits the throne she flees and, in the process, without meaning to, she causes the kingdom to become frozen in an eternal winter. Her sister Anna is nearly killed by her inability to control her powers and Elsa decides to banish herself but in the end she wants to reunite with her sister and find true love, the sort they find in fairy tales. Oh, and we should point out that the story is funny too, with many comedic characters and moments.
The story is only loosely based on The Snow Queen. Thomas Schumacher, president and producer at Disney Theatrical Productions, has been working on the Frozen project for a long time.
“We did take a whack at The Snow Queen in my time at feature animation but never cracked it,” he recalls.
But eventually Frozen the movie and Frozen 2, the 2019 sequel, and finally the Broadway musical, grew out of experimental beginnings. Frozen was always “a Broadway musical waiting to be born”, Schumacher says.
The musical is based on the original movie but the film needed to be expanded and the theatrical version is more of a family affair, a production suitable for older children (4+, say the producers) and a lavish show for adults too, and that required more songs.
Frozen opened on Broadway at the St James Theatre in March 2018 with the highest box office advance in Broadway history. Frozen was the highest grossing new musical of its Broadway season in its first year. Its global footprint has expanded to include a North American tour, London’s West End, Japan and Germany. The Australian production was, however, the first to open outside of New York.
Thomas Schumacher says the score the Lopezes wrote for the Broadway production “tells the audience something they didn’t know before about a story and characters they think they know by heart”.
Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez worked closely with Disney, and their own love for each other and of family imbues the story. In fact it’s the foundation of the whole project. There’s a lot of love in Frozen and it comes from the heart of the Lopez family and radiates out across the world. Kristen and Bobby are symbols of family togetherness.
They write together and they interview together, which is a bit of a juggle at times over the phone ... but cute.
“We do everything together,” Kristen says.
“It’s a wonderful life. We wake up and get our kids off together, we work out together, we write together. We’re together all day long.”
And as Bobby points out the idea of a story about sisters was an inherent part of the attraction to the project.
“It was our point of entry because we had daughters and Kristen has sisters,” Bobby says. “When they showed us a drawing of young Elsa making snow magic and little Anna gazing up at it in wonder it reminded us of our own two daughters and their true love – the kind where the younger daughter absolutely idolises her older sister and can feel heartbroken when that older sister closes a door. We knew we had something personal to add to the story and we jumped at the chance to work on it.
“It’s a story for everyone and I know the movie still gets sons and daughters twirling around the room. When I hear about that and I see it happening all over the world it makes me feel like we have a purpose on this earth.”
In their Note From The Songwriters in the program for the musical, the Lopezes describe Frozen as “The ultimate family musical: one made by families about a family, paralysed when frozen by fear, saving itself and finding its way through true love”.
“Frozen for us has always been about exploring the fairy tale definition of true love to include family. And over the past eight years in the process of making the movie and now the Broadway musical, we have been lucky to be included in an ever expanding family of artists who have poured their true love into Frozen.”
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