Robert Brill has a set of keys to the kingdom - Disney's magic kingdom, that is. And the keys open a lot of doors. A LOT of doors.

Doors, see, are what makes the Disney-Pixar world of "Monsters, Inc." go round.

Not to mention in and out.

If it wasn't for the doors, the monsters wouldn't have their portals into the closets of human kids everywhere. And if the monsters couldn't get into the kids' closets, they wouldn't be able to scare the moppets and make them scream.

And if the kids didn't scream, there wouldn't be the necessary energy generated to keep the city of Monstropolis, well, monstrous.

See?

So the guy who builds the doors for the world of "Monsters, Inc." had better have his hinges on tight.

Robert Brill is that guy: the talented man who designed the sets and props, and, yes, doors for "Disney on Ice: Disney/Pixar's Monsters, Inc." (a bit cumbersome, but it's the official title they want the world to use).

When the show arrives for a four-day stand at Bloomington's U.S. Cellular Coliseum Jan. 18 through 21, it'll mark the first time a touring ice extravaganza of this theatrical nature has ever skated through the Twin Cities.

And Brill's handiwork will be on lavish display as the hit 2001 Disney-Pixar animated film turns 3-D before our very eyes.

Though he's designed traditional theatrical productions before, this, he confesses, is his first ice show, and he's come out of it chilled and thrilled to the bone.

To meet the challenge, he began attending some of the big touring ice shows, including the "Disney on Ice" production of "Toy Story 2."

These weren't his father's ice shows, he discovered.

Heck, they weren't even his own.

"The thing today," he says, "is that kids are more sophisticated now, and audiences are more sophisticated, too, and they're expecting a completely different experience from the ice shows I remember from my childhood. It was really amazing for me to see these almost rock concert-like experiences."

Brill, whose twin interests growing up were magic and architecture, got to combine those pastimes while conjuring the elaborate world of "Monsters, Inc." as a dimensional space existing in a free-form world of frozen surfaces.

"It was such a brilliantly designed film," Brills says. "As a matter of fact, it was the first movie my 6-year-old daughter ever saw, and she remembers it very well. When I took her to see the opening of the ice show, it became her first live performance."

Needless to say, as the father of a "Monsters, Inc." fan, Brill felt the pressure to "get it right."

From a narrative standpoint, the ice is nice to the original: It follows the movie scene for scene, and the pre-recorded soundtrack uses music, effects and the star vocals from the film (John Goodman as hero Sulley, Billy Crystal as sidekick Mike, Steve Buscemi as villain Randall, etc.).

"The movie completely inspired me. But of all the moments in the film, the one I kept thinking about was the (climactic) door chase," says Brill, understandably intrigued by the concept of re-creating one of the most elaborate sequences of any computer-animated film made up to that time.

The sequence, which provides the movie with its climax, involves a pursuit through the Monster, Inc., factory's "door vault," where the entryways into the human world are stored by the thousands.

Dubbed "doormania" by Brill, the sequence didn't daunt him in the least, he says.

"When it came time to approach the chase, it actually fit together quite well and wasn't as hard as I thought it would be."

Even so, the sequence is a choreographic/technological marvel requiring split-second timing between the skaters in the oversized monster costumes (Sulley alone measures in at over 9 feet), the technicians synching the lighting and audio effects, and the engineering of Brill's sets and props.

The doors are all over the ice, and, per the movie, all over above it. That feat comes courtesy of a series of tracks and other devices that allow 24 doors to be moving through the show simultaneously.

Despite the logistics, everything happens at the push of a button: the doors move onto the ice and above the rink, and the inner workings of "Monsters, Inc.," spring to life.

"Working on the ice is very interesting," says Brill, "because you don't have to rely on technology in many ways - sometimes it's as simple as pushing the object onto the ice."

That approach can involve everything from undercover skaters to motorized and self-propelled props and sets.

In designing the doors and the other artifacts of the Monsters world, Brill had to take into account the size and scale of the costumes being worn by the skaters, including, as mentioned, the 9-foot-tall lead monster, Sulley.

In other words, a 9-foot monster isn't gonna get through an 8½-foot door, no matter what.

"On film," notes Brill, "it's very easy to make that character walk through a door; on ice, it's a different story."

Luckily, the man who's designed them has his hinges on tight.

Just ask his toughest critic - his "Monsters, Inc."-loving 6-year-old daughter.

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28-year-old toddler stands as lone human character in production

By Dan Craft | dcraft@pantagraph.com

Before Pixar-Disney's "Monsters, Inc." came along six years ago, the most famous fictional character named Boo was probably the mysterious Boo Radley of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."

To a new generation, Mr. Radley probably doesn't mean Boo.

Instead, the name-recognition honor doubtless goes to a babbling toddler who refuses to be scared by monsters in her closet - specifically, one James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, head scare man over at the Monsters, Inc. factory in Monstropolis.

In the 2001 animated movie, Boo measured a couple feet high and wound up scampering about the Monsters, Inc. factory in a series of adventures with Sulley and his cyclopean pal Mike.

In the "Disney on Ice" production of the movie coming to Bloomington's U.S. Cellular Coliseum, Boo measures in at around 4-feet-10, and her real-life counterpart is, in fact, 28 years old.

Plus, she doesn't babble.

She's Raegan Brierton, a native of Rockford, where she grew up an amateur skater, and an alumna of Peoria's Bradley University.

Post-Bradley, she fell in with the "Disney on Ice" crowd, and has remained with them since, which adds up to around eight years and includes various skating stints in "The Little Mermaid," an underwater tenure that lasted four years.

All told, she has performed in five of Disney's 27 ice shows.

In the context of the icebound version of "Monsters, Inc.," Brierton says she has no trouble pulling off the illusion that she's a toddler, especially as she glides under and around the cast of oversized Monsters, some of whom tower in the 9-feet range.

As the lone human character in the rink, not to mention the tiniest, "you really have to have a grasp of skating techniques and be able to maneuver around these props, which are so large," she says.

That scale has made "Monsters, Inc." "kind of more challenging than the other shows."

The show's most challenging sequence comes near the end during the chase through the door vault (see accompanying interview with the man who designed it), which involves an engineering feat that sends 24 rotating doors over and above the ice rink.

Literally, "you have to be on your toes all the time, since you might get confused whether you're going on stage right or left as all these gigantic doors are rotating around you. They're very, very solid and have a large metal tube at the center, which enables them to be maneuvered around the ice and rotated in circles."

At one point, Brierton and her Boo literally leave the ice and end up flying around above the rink and the audience around it.

Safety harnesses provide the security.

Even so, it's not exactly what they taught her at skating school, or any school.

Unlike the rest of the cast, whose members are buried deep inside elaborate costuming that replicates the movie's character designs, Brierton's face remains in full view of the audience.

That exposure, she says, "allows me to interact with the audience a bit, and wave and shake hands and give kids the high-five, whereas the monsters are so large that they don't have the ability to go off the ice and play."

That daunting size may keep the monsters at bay from the audience, but they do help Brierton put her character across.

"They dwarf me so much that it makes it easier for me to sell the fact that I'm a 3-year-old to the audience," says the 28-year-old.

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Mon-stars on ice

Among the "Monsters, Inc." denizens who'll be blade-running their way through Bloomington's U.S. Cellular Coliseum Jan. 18 through 21 are:

James P. 'Sulley' Sullivan

• Hue: Blue-green-purple

• Height: Nine feet in his stalking feet

• Job: Big 9-foot-tall scary guy with horns and fur

• Claim to fame: Big 9-foot-tall creampuff with heart of goo

Mike Wazowski

• Hue: Pea-green

• Height: Eye-foot-five

• Job: Closeted eyewitness for best friend Sulley (see above)

• Claim to fame: "I only have eye for you."

Boo

• Hue: Think pink

• Height: Not very

• Job: Cute-dispenser

• Claim to fame: Gurgle power

Randall Boggs

• Hue: Mauve

• Height: Gollum-esque

• Job: Monsters, Stink

• Claim to fame: Sounds suspiciously like the pasty guy from "Fargo"

Henry J. Waternoose III

• Hue: Gray scaly skin, red snappy vest

• Height: Half-a-Sulley

• Job: Big Monsters, Inc. kahuna

• Claim to fame: Number of legs coincides with number of eyes, which is a lot

Roz

• Hue: Earthworm tones

• Height: Won't let anyone get close enough to take measurements

• Job: Dispatch manager with major attitude

• Claim to fame: Slug-ish

Celia

• Hue: Purple

• Height: Like Mike

• Job: Ressssseptionisssst

• Claim to fame: Snakes on her mane

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At a glance

What: Disney on Ice Presents Disney/Pixar's Monsters, Inc.

When: 7 p.m. Jan. 18-20, 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Jan. 20, 1 p.m. Jan. 21

Where: U.S. Cellular Coliseum, 101 S. Madison St., Bloomington

Cost: $15 to $42

Box office number: (866) 891-9992