If Disney’s taught us anything, 𒐪it’s that parents die — and often in the most undelightful ways. Hunters, stampedes, shipwrecks and barricudas have orphaned many a beauty and quite a few beasts, thanks🌱 mostly to the grisly Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales that inspired them.
Now comes the new Broadway musical “Frozen.” 💝In the 2013 animated hit it’s based on, the ship carrying Elsa and Anna’s royal parents sinks into a roiling sea.
For the stage version, choreographer Rob Ashford and director Michael Grandage hit on something subtler. In keeping with the “poetic nature of theater,” Ashford tells The Post, “we did a simple staging of their death that hopefully 🐻gets the point across.” And so — spoiler alert! — a ship’s bell tolls as the king and queen fall back into the arms of six men in black. After they’re carried away, the young princesses are dressed for mourning, in black capes and bonnets.
“It isn’t gruesome,” Ashford says of the scene, “but it’s beautiful in its sadness.”
H📖ere are several classic ways, subtle and not, in which Disney has dispatched mothers and fathers.
“Bambi”
A young deer is g🍸razing in the grass with his mom when the doe lifts her head, ears pricked. Ominous music plays as Bambi’s mother runs with him toward a thicket. We hear a gunshot and then . . . “I made it! I made it, Mother!” Bambi cries. And, unless your heart’s made of stone, you’ll cry, too.
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame”
Thundering up on hꦆorseback comes one of the most evil figures in Disneyland: Frollo, who charges up to Quasimodo’s gypsy mother and flings her onto the stone steps where she lies, unbloodied but unmoving. Think that’s bad? For his encore, Frollo tries to drown the little baby hunchback she’d clutched to her chest when he chased her.
“Tarzan”
A kindly female gorilla named Kala cliꦜmbs up to an abandoned treehouse to find the place a wreck: Spent she🌺lls and a rifle lie on the floor, along with some bloody handprints and a framed photo of a couple holding their baby. Just then she hears a cry. Why, it’s the baby — Tarzan — who’s somehow managed to avoid the leopard that killed his parents, and which is ready to pounce again.
“The Lion King”
Family therapists had a field day with this one: Simba the lion club is tricked into thinking that he’s꧂ responsible for the wildebeest stampede that kills Mufasa, his royal 🔯father. Oh, the guilt! In a brilliant bit of theater, director Julie Taymor not only evokes the stampede, but the grief that follows, when lionesses pull white silks from the eyes of their masks in a heartfelt show of tears.
“Finding Nemo”
Marlin and Coral are a blissfully happy couple of clown fish with a houseful of unhatched eggs when a barracuda bears down on them. On the scale of tearjerking moments, it’s hard to top Albert Brooks’ heartbrok🎶en “Coral? Coral!” — and 🍬the way his fatherly fish scoops up the lone surviving egg, vowing to protect him forever. Oh, Nemo!
“The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning”
The whole fishy family’s out for a swim when Ariel’s mother, Queen Athena,🍸 is captured by pirates, who promptly cras💟h their ship into a rock. Internet scolds blame King Triton for not keeping a better eye out for his spouse. In any event, this is one of Disney’s less inventive efforts: No wonder it’s video only.