Appearances can be deceiving. That is the point of all the commotion in "The Snow Queen", a narrated puppet ballet that will retell the classic Hans Christian Andersen tale at l p.m. and 4 p.m. Sunday at The Egg in Albany. Towering"Bunraku" puppets, one as high as l5 feet, a score by Archangelo Correlli, and masked dancers will be used by the Hudson Vagabond Puppets to tell the tale of a boy's wounded eye and his frozen heart. For the past eight years, the Rockland County based puppet company has performed the holiday tale about a girl's journey to the North Pole to save her imprisoned brother from the Snow Queen, said Edward Winslow, choreographer for the troupe. Unlike puppeteers who use traditional marionettes or hand held puppets, the puppeteers who move the huge foam puppets in this production are visible to the audience. "We're not hidden by a platform" Winslow said. This "Bunraku" style of puppetry is Japanese in origin. Puppeteers use rods to control the puppets that rest on their shoulders instead of using strings or fitting them around their hands, he said.In "The Snow Queen" the fairy characters are between l3 and l5 feet tall, the human characters are between 6 and l0 feet tall, and the animal characters are performed by dancers wearing masks. In some of the creations, Winslow said, there are two people inside the cloak or coat of the puppet.

The original Hans Christian Andersen story was published in seven sections, designed to be read to a child in the week before Christmas. The original story, Winslow said, was filled with religious imagery that the troupe cut out to make it accessible to people of all faiths. At the heart of the tale, the company found a sister's love that bridges the distance between blindness and sight, prison and freedom. "We took out the specifically religious references and came up with a childhood journey about friendship" Winslow said "Its going to satisfy people who celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, everything. In the current version, the heroine, Gerda, begins her journey shortly after her brother Kay gets a splinter of glass caught in his eye and begins to see the world in a sharp, mathematical way. "He sees that things that are perfect are good and imperfect are bad" Winslow said. Kay soon notices all the imperfections in people and starts to dislike them. When he meets the Snow Queen, he is impressed by her frozen perfection and goes to her palace in the North Pole only to be made a prisoner. The Snow Queen says that she will let him go when he figures out how to make a series of stubborn dancing letters spell the word "Eternity". He is unable to do so until Gerda arrives to rescue him. His tears free the splinter from his eye and he sees the world as he used to. Suddenly, the letters obediently spell the word that he wants them to.

Peppered throughout Gerda's loyal journey are her encounters with animals, people and strange, mythical creatures. When she gets to her destination, the North Pole is represented on stage by a large cloth backdrop with splashes of color representing the northern lights. "It's a banner that goes across the entire length of the stage". Winslow said. "The northern lights are just kind of shining in the way they do for those of us who have actually seen them." Winslow said that after the performance, the troupe of puppeteers will explain to the audience how the puppets work, how the puppeteers manipulate them and also talk a little about the history of Bunraku puppets. For Winslow, who said he has read and studied fairy tales from around the world, using Japanese style puppets to tell a Danish fairy tale did not create conflicts. Good stories transcend culture and time, he said. "We tell the same story in a certain way because of the similarity of our conditions." Like "Charlotte's Web", "Bridge to Terrabithia," and many children's stories around the world "The Snow Queen" is primarily about one friend helping another. Unlike the mechanics of puppeteering, however, the heart of good storytelling remains a mystery. That for Winslow is a subject that, unlike the insides of puppets, should not be fully sketched out. "I think it's kind of fun to not explain it." He said.

-Michael Santa Rita, The Daily Gazette, Friday Dec. 3, l999