On a late April Sunday afternoon, like many little girls in Montréal, I went to see Geordie Theatre’s production of Snow White with my dad. As a young millennial, I watched Disney’s 1937 version a hundred times. Snow White was never my favourite princess — I always preferred princesses with more moxie, like Mulan (she literally saved China!) — so I was excited to see an inventive adaptation that, per the show’s description, “tosses Damsel-in-distress tropes out the window.”

When we sat down, we were met with a gleaming forest of shiny trees and a platform with a chair and a chest by Set Designer Bruno-Pierre Houle. The set was smartly done and provided many places to delimit. When the show started, we met our three main characters: Snow White (Tiernan Cornford) stumbled into the forest, excited to tell her story with the help of the seven dwarves. She was quickly followed by Dwarf number four (Jeremy Lewis) — we are introduced to only one of the seven dwarves because the others were “running late’’ — and a live musician (Sarah Segal-Lazar). The play loosely follows the Disney movie version: Snow White has lost her parents and is driven out of the castle she calls home because she is more beautiful than her vanity-obsessed stepmother. After the hunter tasked with her assassination refuses to kill her, she lives in exile and befriends 7 Dwarves who provide her with shelter.

The show description promises a ‘’brave Snow White that does not wait for rescue’’ but struggles to prove it. The show was stuck between referencing the fairytale’s Disney adaptation and updating the source material by inserting empowering girlboss elements, and many of the modifications were not coherent with this intent. The plot was the weakest part of the show, starting with the casting. A Black woman plays Snow White, but no changes were made to the story’s most famous line: ’’Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’’ That made me raise an eyebrow. This felt like a superficial attempt at diverse casting that is more about checking a box. The omission of that line would have been a more thoughtful inclusion. It is frankly baffling that out of all the changes the writers have made to the plot, this line was retained.

Snow White was not a character that could be looked up to. She neither learns from her mistakes nor shows autonomy throughout her predicament. After every encounter with the Queen, who disguises herself as a witch and ventures into the woods to find and kill her, Snow White ends up lying in the forest to be found by her 7 roommates. In a confusing divergence from the plot of the Disney movie, the play had the Queen attempt to take Snow White’s life three separate times, which is two more times than in the original fairytale. This addition to the plot of the movie was completely superfluous and added neither context nor character development. It felt like cheap beats to just move the story along. Each assassination attempt should have been an opportunity for Snow White to learn something about herself or how to defeat the witch. Instead, each time the Queen tries to murder her, Snow White is fooled. None of the dwarves teach her how to protect herself. At the end of the play, Snow White does not defeat the witch herself; rather, the dwarves and the forest animals she befriended do it for her.

Many other modifications were strange. For example, there were many times the main actors spoke in a way that might hint at a song from the Disney movie, but they stopped short. Lewis and Cornford especially have such beautiful voices; the latter sang her first lines, but her gorgeous singing voice was never heard again. It is a shame that we do not get to hear them more. Another example, The mystery dwarf starts to play the Dwarves’ iconic song, “Heigh Ho,” but only for a couple of seconds (probably to not get sued by the big mouse). That took me out, because it was a direct reference to the movie, but cut in an abrupt way. I understand the appeal to hint at the Disney movie, since it is a reference that children could understand immediately. But I wished they were omitted entirely since this is supposed to be a unique reimagining of the fairytale.

It really is a shame the plot was so poorly written because the two main actors were fantastic. It would be expected that having only two actors portray 10+ characters would be confusing, but both actors delivered. Both Cornford and Lewis were really funny. As an adult, I did not expect to laugh as much as I did at a children’s play. Their jokes were family-friendly but not corny, and they interacted with the audience of young children while keeping up the story’s momentum. There were very creative ways to indicate different characters with the costumes. For example, Lewis, and by consequence, Dwarf Number Four, played all seven dwarves and distinguished them by wearing his beanie in different variations. The fact that there were only two actors was fun and made the play really engaging throughout. Each time a new character was introduced, I was curious to find out how they would tweak their costume, physicality, and/or voice to differentiate them from the rest, and it worked every time. It would have been less entertaining if there were more people, especially since the set was quite small because of the trees.

Ultimately, this attempt at a girlbossification of Snow White fell flat. However, I can’t say that I didn't have fun. It was so nice to see so many children enjoy the theatre, an experience I never got myself outside of school outings. Despite the plot issues, the actors carried the show with their presence and their banter. There was also a Q&A with the actors after the show, and the children asked surprising questions, inquiring about how the set was made and what the actors’ favourite parts to play were. So just for that, I am glad to have been in the audience to witness this show. The children seemed to have had a fantastic time, but I just wish that the play delivered on its promise of a Snow White who is fully in charge of her story.

Snow White played at Centaur Theatre as part of Geordie Theatre’s 2025-26 season on April 16th-26th, 2026.

https://geordie.ca/snow-white/