Twelve Kinds of Ice
Synopsis: Ellen looks back on the winters of her childhood and the icy adventures she shared with her father, from spotting the first thin skin of ice on a pail to flooding a backyard rink for skating shows, hockey games and solo skates under the moon. A world premiere musical for two actors.
Starring: Katherine Fried (Ellen/Young Ellen), John-Michael Zuerlein (Dad)
Written By: Book, music and lyrics by Ben Steinfeld, adapted from the book by Ellen Bryan Obed, with illustrations by Barbara McClintock
Directed By: Rick Dildine; music direction by Justin D. Cook
Design: Michael McGarty (scenic), Sarah Bahr (costumes), Marcus Dilliard (lighting), Melanie Chen Cole (sound)
Production Type: Professional
Venue: Cargill Stage, Children’s Theatre Company, Minneapolis
Running Length: 1 hour, no intermission
Content Advisory: Best enjoyed by ages 7 and up. Lap passes ($5) for children 3 and under.
Now Playing: Through November 22, 2026
Performance Reviewed: Thursday, October 22, 2026, at 7 pm
In This Performance: Full cast
Show Review in Brief: Katherine Fried and John-Michael Zuerlein bring rich, warm voices to this world premiere musical, and Justin D. Cook’s one-man band makes it a trio. The parent-child bond is still settling in, but a gorgeous finale and a title song you’ll hum all the way home make it a sweet, sincere hour for older kids.
4 out of 5 Spotlights
Review:
Long before I started writing about movies, I was practically raised at Children’s Theatre Company. My parents held four front-row-center Saturday night season tickets on the old Main Stage, now the UnitedHealth Group Stage, for more than a decade. So landing in the front row again for Twelve Kinds of Ice at Children’s Theatre felt a little like coming home, even on the smaller Cargill Stage next door. It’s the first world premiere I’ve covered for Off Screen, On Stage, and it gets the same lens I used on Annie at Chanhassen. Sweet, sincere and just an hour long, it gets an awful lot right with two actors and one very busy musician.
Twelve Kinds of Ice at Children’s Theatre: A Backyard Rink of Memories
Ben Steinfeld, co-artistic director of New York’s Fiasco Theater, wrote the book, music and lyrics, adapting Ellen Bryan Obed’s collection of winter vignettes (illustrated by Barbara McClintock). Katherine Fried plays Ellen, who looks back on the winters of her childhood and the icy adventures she shared with her father, played by John-Michael Zuerlein. It starts with the first thin skin of ice on the sheep’s pail and builds to the big event: flooding a backyard rink for skating shows, hockey games and solo skates under the moon. Plenty of Minnesota families know that rite of passage by heart.
It’s a memory play, and from her entrance Fried’s Ellen is ready to tell us a story, pulling the audience in so close that we almost don’t notice the lights going down while she’s talking. Suddenly we’re learning about all twelve kinds of ice through her memories of growing up with Dad. Her sister, brothers and mother get a mention but aren’t really factored in. This is about a daughter, her father and their shared love of all things ice. Each new kind marks another step, from the giddy anticipation of the first freeze toward the memories we carry long after the thaw.
Skating stories on screen usually come with sky-high stakes, from the comeback in Ice Castles to the tabloid circus of I, Tonya. And let’s be honest, half the kids in the room have probably seen Frozen more times than their parents can count. This one skates on a much smaller pond, and that’s where its charm lives.
A Two-Hander, or Make That Three
With a two-person cast, three if you count music director Justin D. Cook, which we should, it’s not hard to single people out. Fried and Zuerlein are talented performers with rich, warm voices who know how to use them, and in this space, I doubt they would even need the microphones to be heard. Fried plays Ellen both as an adult and as her thirty-years-younger self, and she wisely sidesteps altering her voice too much to age herself down. Her young Ellen is simply young, that’s all, and it’s easy to buy into her physicality and her interplay with Zuerlein as her father in the flashbacks.
Fried was so good a few summers ago as Carole King in Theatre L’Homme Dieu’s Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Zuerlein is a Twin Cities stalwart who toured with Mamma Mia! and played Frog in CTC’s A Year with Frog and Toad. It’s through the songs that the ice imagery becomes focused and external. The two of them land on moments that hit close to home for the older folks in the audience, while giving the youngsters plenty to expand their growing minds. There’s even some audience participation, a brief scare when Ellen imagines a monster under the black ice (it startled one child at our performance, but it passes quickly), and perhaps a treat on the way out.
I did feel the two were still finding their footing as parent and child throughout the hour. Perhaps it was the inordinately loud audience at my performance, and even by CTC standards there were plenty of unfortunate distractions from the crowd. Still, I sensed a slight distance between them, and not just in how they were staged.
Tarps, Globes and a Little CTC Magic
I haven’t spent much time in the Cargill Stage, but I love the flexibility of the space. The audience sits in a wide, low thrust, so the actors are never very high off the ground. When you walk in, Michael McGarty’s set is already waiting, with a piano, several guitars and the other music makers Cook will use over the next sixty minutes. Two platforms stand in for a dock, a bedroom and an observation deck, among other things, and a flat wagon holds a number of the props used throughout the night.
Large gray-blue tarps on the floor stand in for the ice across the long black-box space, and above it all hang strung lights and white paper globes, creating everything from daybreak over field ice to a father’s evening clean-up of his backyard ice rink. Of course, this being CTC, a set can never be just a set, so expect magic at various points, especially the finale. That finale is gorgeous, thanks to Marcus Dilliard, who lights it brilliantly, though I wish it had a stronger button to send us out on.
One-Man Band, Plenty of Harmony
Cook’s one-man band handles Steinfeld’s pleasant tunes nicely, whether he’s guiding the two leads through the easy-to-latch-onto title song (I still have it in my head) or simply being a presence under a scene to deepen its impact. Whenever a musician is onstage, I try to give them some attention too. But Cook is so good at keeping the focus on the storytellers in the room, and CTC artistic director Rick Dildine’s direction is so precise about it, that he disappears visually but never aurally.
Steinfeld’s music, book and lyrics are sweet and simple, sometimes reaching for something deeper than three minutes of song can hold, but always sincere in the effort. Melanie Chen Cole’s sound design balances the voices with Cook’s live music, never letting him get too loud for the actors and always letting the orchestral arrangements shine when they’re given their space. It’s a give-and-take between a lot of departments, and from where I sat, all that harmony brought the show ever closer together.
Lace Up the Big Kids
CTC recommends this one for ages 7 and up, and it’s always worth checking CTC’s age recommendations before you buy. Those numbers are a good starting point, but parents know their children best. An hour in a theater doesn’t require perfect stillness, but it does ask young audience members to stay reasonably engaged, keep their feet to themselves, and share the space without becoming a constant distraction to the people around them. If your child isn’t quite there yet, there’s nothing wrong with waiting for a show better suited to where they are. For the littlest theatergoers, CTC has shows built specifically for them later this season, including Chicka Chicka Boom Boom: The Musical for ages 4 to 7 and Havana Hop for ages 2 to 6.
For a one-hour new musical this small and intimate, it’s hard to ding Twelve Kinds of Ice at Children’s Theatre too much for a few minor stumbles, especially when some of what distracted me had nothing to do with what was happening onstage. The performers are terrific, the show knows exactly what size it wants to be, and there’s something lovely about watching it unfold so close to the ice. Bring the big kids, grab a seat up front, and don’t be surprised if that title song follows you all the way home.
Where to See Twelve Kinds of Ice
Through November 22 on CTC’s Cargill Stage. Select Thursdays and Fridays at 7 pm, weekend matinees at 11 am and 2 pm. ASL-interpreted November 14 (11 am) and November 21 (2 pm, also audio described); sensory-friendly November 19 (7 pm). Tickets $25 to $65 at childrenstheatre.org or 612.874.0400.
Disclosure: I attended the Thursday, October 22, 7 pm performance as a guest of Children’s Theatre Company, which provided two complimentary tickets. I have no personal connection to anyone in this production.
Quoting this review? Please credit: Joe Botten, Off Screen/On Stage (TheMNMovieMan.com)
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