Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin
The Goblin (Mark Branner) serves the Snow Queen (Nicole
Tessier) by bringing her children from Earth. The Queen
picks children who show lively spirit in their dance and play.

Chilling queen and dazzling
costumes make for a heart-warming
holiday performance

By Betty Shimabukuro
Star-Bulletin

IF EVER THERE WAS A PLACE that proves danger may lurk amid beauty, it is the sparkling world of the Snow Queen.

Here lives a pretty lady in a beautiful gown with a lacy collar that surrounds her like a halo -- who collects children. Other people's children, lured to her snow kingdom where they walk around in frozen somnambulism.

Her henchman is the Goblin, who fetches children for her, but really wishes the queen would just love him instead of questing always for lively young 'uns. The queen, he explains, is not human, "but she wants what people have so she steals it." She has no heart, he says, but then, neither does he, so they'd be perfect together.

By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin
Kay (Michael Ng) is the latest youngster the Snow Queen
wishes to capture. Gerde (Maren Oom) is his friend, who
follows him to the icy kingdom to try and save him. The
Goblin captures children by tricking them into
looking into his mirror.

So begins "The Snow Queen and the Goblin," a dance-theater-puppetry performance at Kennedy Theatre at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. It is a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, but in the hands of director Peggy Hunt it is also a spectacle of elaborate costumes and a glowing set.

Hunt was inspired by the Carnival celebration in Trinidad, where she spent her sabbatical studying puppetry. Costumes are so huge and elaborate there, she said, that some of them have wheels. "What they called costumes, we'd call floats."

And so her queen wears a costume that nearly doubles her height, and the royal guards loom tall as they walk -- even dance -- on stilts. Another character is a larger-than-life puppet.

"Snow Queen" may sound grim, but it has a happy ending and it sparkles with that holiday belief that even the iciest creature can grow a heart.

ON STAGE What: "The Snow Queen and the Goblin" When: Saturday and Dec. 9-12, 7 p.m., except Dec. 12 matinee, 2 p.m. Where: University of Hawaii Kennedy Theatre Cost: $10 general admission, discounts for military, seniors, UH faculty, students and children. Call: 956-7655

Click for online
calendars and events.