The rites of winter

Creation Theatre's stunning Snow Queen

Creation Theatre: The Snow Queen, at North Wall, Oxford, until January 5

Creation Theatre's visually and aurally stunning traverse-style production of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, written and directed by Gari Jones, grips the audience from the outset. Jones has assembled Creation's crack team of Ryan Dawson Laight as designer, Matt Eaton with his typically crackly sound design and Ashley Bale (with John Welton) as lighting designer and the results are, as ever, unsettlingly brilliant.

Fresh from her role as Miranda in Creation's The Tempest, Annabelle Terry is a marvel in the leading role of Gerda, her costume suggestive of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. With her hair in an old-fashioned crocheted net, she's fascinated by roses and it's the cover of the country and western hit I Never Promised You a Rose Garden that echoes most plaintively throughout the play.

Natasha Rickman, another returnee, brings humour, seduction and a chilly beauty to the Snow Queen, gorgeous in a silver-twigged tiara that's magically old-fashioned. James Burton, also familiar to Creation audiences, is hilarious as a foppish prince, whilst newcomer Veronica Beatrice Lewis shows her versatility playing a hedgehog, a pigeon and the spoiled princess and Bart Lambert is suitably gauche and innocent as the lost soul, Kai.

Hannah says: It was scary when Kai reached out to the Snow Queen's hand and he got pulled away into the dark. The funniest part was when everybody got snowballs made of gigantic balloons. I threw one on to the stage where the Snow Queen and Gerda were when they were doing a challenge. It was hard to see them because there were so many snowballs in the way. My favourite character was Gerda because she was so brave when Kai got captured by the evil Snow Queen and she had to take a long journey meeting so many weird people. One wanted to keep her forever, another wanted her to forget about everything and bandits tried to kill her and one girl wanted to be her friend or else she would get angry. The costumes were fab-u-lous and the Snow Queen had such a long cape that it nearly covered the whole stage.

JON LEWIS & HANNAH LEWIS (8)