FROZEN. To 4 November.

Keswick

FROZEN
by Bryony Lavery

Theatre By The Lake (Studio) In rep to 4 November 2006
Mon-Sat 8.15pm Mat 23 Sept 2.15pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 017687 74411
www.theatreebythelake.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 August

Gripping revival of serious, and seriously involving, play.
First seen in the spacious main-house of Birmingham Rep, it would be risky for any theatre to give a large space to this 3-hander about the impact of child-murder and paedophilia. Especially when, unlike Birmingham, they don’t have Anita Dobson or Josie Lawrence as the bereaved mother and sociopath expert respectively.

Dobson was magnificent, especially in the scene where she confronts the imprisoned murderer years later in prison. Tom Georgeson played Ralph, whose frozen sensitivity first cracks during this interview, with near-utter stillness, reflecting a dead conscience coming to grips with new awareness.

Sarah Punshon’s revival in Keswick’s tiny studio space can’t quite match that force; probably nothing can. But David Tarkenter’s edgy, fidgeting performance here vividly displays a mind where the ice-cutters are beginning their work. And the subsequent scene where Tarkenter’s Ralph tries to write a brief letter of regret to Kate Layden’s long-bereaved Nancy provides a text-book instance of how words in a script are a starting, shaping means of creating character.

Tarkenter’s struggle for words, the fury with his inability to express himself, his repeated, angry ripping of small sheets of paper, creates the turmoil of Ralph’s mind. With his performance in Colchester’s Of Mice and Men last autumn, this reveals the actor as among the finest on the British stage.

Between them Punshon and Marilyn Cutts integrate the play’s resident expert Agnetha into the far more immediate human action of the others. Herself bereaved of her married lover, Agnetha has to come to terms with her responses, though it’s always going to be a background to the child-killer’s story and the impact on the girl’s mother.

As this mother, Nancy Layden defines a rising anxiety, from initial everyday annoyance with her children through the decision to send the more pliable one on an errand, early wisps of concern at her non-return to the horror of realisation. Intercut, the nature of Ralph’s rough story emerges more horrifically owing to Tarkenter’s assured tone.

Elizabeth Wright’s minimal, clinical setting aids the analytical way the minds behind events are movingly revealed in this valuable revival of Lavery’s finely-crafted play.

Agnetha: Mariltyn Cutts
Nancy: Kate Layden
Guard: Guy Parry
Ralph: David Tarkenter

Director: Sarah Punshon
Designer: Elizabeth Wright
Lighting: Ben Pacey
Sound: James Earls Davis
Dialect coach: Charmian Hoare

2006-09-05 11:53:41