The Ice Queen: Review – Scene One Plus

The Ice Queen

Studio Theatre    

Studio Theatre, Salisbury

Lloyd Perry 

10 December 2025

Tis the season to be jolly! And what better way to start the festive season then settling in on a cold night to watch a pantomime.

The Christmas offering from Studio Theatre, Salisbury this year is a new pantomime penned by Studio’s very own Ian Flindell. The story is reassuringly predictable with good overcoming evil, friendships made, the odd marriage or two and some humour along the way.

The plot moves us between summer sunshine and winter ice over two acts, with songs, dance and a plethora of Christmas trees adorning the set for good measure. Early on we find out that Princess Celeste has ended up in the spell of the Ice Queen and been taken to the icy north. The King and Queen are not sure what to do and agree to send some friends that work at the castle, led by Nursey, Freddie, Princess Gabriella and Prince Edwin, on the long trek to overthrow the Ice Queen and bring the Princess back.

I managed to be able to see this production towards the end of the run with only 3 performances left and with the strong pedigree that Studio has in the local area, I had high hopes for this new pantomime.

Overall, it didn’t quite hit the mark for me which was a real shame. There seem to be a lack of confidence, a lot of nervousness and it did come across as being under rehearsed.

There were some good performances, from the all-female cast, that helped the evening along its way. Lorna Matthews-Keel as King Benevolent gave a confident and assured performance throughout, her diction and characterisation was great! The Ice Queen, Queen Wintergretta, played by Samantha Luckman, was suitably cold and she engaged with the audience very well. The stand out performance came from Paola Campari-Moss as Nursey, a ‘dame’ role that she delivered really well and built up a great rapport with the audience. A special mention too of Millie Booth as Freddie, her guitar playing and singing was very good indeed. The costumes were brilliant and enhanced the characters throughout.

The pace and scene changes, however, needed a lot more work from the joint Direction of Jill Redston and Anthony von Roretz. The pace was slow and the scene changes throughout were laboured with slow lighting effects adding even more time between scenes. There was a real opportunity to add in some more modern festive or themed music to the scene changes to add pace and to cover. While the projection was a brilliant idea and worked in the main, it was not easy to read the words for the audience participation sections and it would have been lovely to have had the Christmas trees lit up and some festive music to help set the atmosphere as you walk in to take your seat.

The cast seemed nervous and throughout both halves the prompt became a feature, so much so the audience went home knowing his name as the cast asked over to him a number of times! But in a pantomime is this a real issue? I am not sure and will let the paying audience decide!

All in all, it was not quite the evening I had hoped for. There were some good performances, but further polish was needed to meet the high standards that Studio Theatre set.

The Ice Queen runs until 13 December with tickets still available for all remaining performances.