FROZEN. To 3 May.
Manchester.
FROZEN
by Bryony Lavery.
Library Theatre To 26 April 2008.
Mon-Thu 7.30pm Fri-Sat 8pm. Mat Thu & Sat 3pm.
Audio-described 16 April, 19 April 3pm.
BSL Signed 23 April.
Captioned 17 April 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.
TICKETS: 0161 236 7110.
www.librarytheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 April.
The darkest material given light, and sympathetically produced..
Alzheimer’s, cancer and child-murder: the subjects playwright Bryony Lavery’s handled make her sound a severely sociological writer. Yet her plays are touched with humour, and suffused in humanity. To call Frozen’s treatment of a child’s abduction and killing sensitive is true, but suggests a preciousness that’s entirely absent.
Lavery doesn’t grip (and she does grip) through sentimentality or sensationalism but by balance and understanding. Roger Haines’ Library Theatre revival of Frozen opens with the least involved character, American academic Agnetha sticking her head in a bag to stop hyperventilating. She seems the character who’s suffering, as she is, with guilt and loss.
But it’s the other woman, Nancy, whose life has been most severely wrenched. Proceeding much of the time in soliloquies, Lavery lets us know what Ralph has done with her daughter Rhona long before Nancy moves from believing the girl will one day come home to knowing the truth.
Other productions have given Nancy an innate sympathy. Haines and Joanna Bacon are braver. After Mia Soteriou’s panic-attack leaves us on the edge between laughter and concern, Bacon’s chattiness veers towards the comic. For a long time she remains a Brummagem busybody. Even her travels talking to parents of other missing children have a pre-packaged feel.
Yet when she visits her daughter’s murderer in prison, this changes, with their long, silent stare: she looking for understanding in his face, he confronting her with uncomprehending blankness. Between Ralph’s two accounts of his childhood, the idealised lies and the brutal truth, she puts out a hand to him, breaking prison protocol, even while she’s showing photos of Rhona. She becomes the mother he never had.
John Killoran makes clear the dangers of a thawing soul, the agony of remorse. It’s only in the subsequent letter-writing scene, with its over-assertive music, Haines misses a trick – it has none of the slow self-laceration David Tarkenter brought to Keswick’s 2006 studio revival.
That apart, this is a strong revival of a major play, well-served too by Judith Croft’s grey set, its bars and pillars suggesting these frozen characters are also imprisoned within their selves.
Agnetha: Mia Soteriou.
Nancy: Joanna Bacon.
Ralph: John Killoran.
Director: Roger Haines.
Designer: Judith Croft.
Lighting: Nick Richings.
Sound: Paul Gregory.
Music: Richard Taylor.
Voice coach: Sally Hague.
2008-04-14 11:47:35