FROZEN Bryony Lavery - June 2007
Frozen was our first production, part of the reason for creating a company in the first place. It’s dark, frightening, illuminating, beautiful and powerful. We thought it needed to be seen. Special thanks to our fantastic crew – Adam Bannister, Lorraine Simms, John Bannister, Steve Burford, Duncan Lewis & Kate Fulton. And huge, immeasurable thanks to Dianne Lloyd for bringing grace, dignity and humanity to Nancy.
CAST
Agnetha Claire Revitt
Nancy Dianne Lloyd
Ralph Lee Farley
Lighting Lorraine Simms
Sound John Bannister
Director Lee Farley
REVIEW
Malvern’s newest theatre company, Perfect Circle, chose their first production wisely and bravely. Not for the faint-hearted, Bryony Lavery’s Frozen is a crafted dissection of the grotesquest of crimes and as far from Le Grand Cirque’s floorshow next door as it’s possible to get.
First presented by Birmingham Rep in 1998 co-incidentally just after Sarah Payne disappeared, the awful co-incidence with another missing child in the news is inescapable. This is a grim, insightful and occasionally uplifting journey into the lives of those affected – the mother, the victim, the family and the killer.
Agnetha is a young American psychiatrist on a mission to compare crimes of evil and crimes caused by illness. Claire L.Revitt’s assured, sassy but inwardly troubled Agnetha hops on a plane to London to confidently lecture the audience on the technicalities of frontal lobe scarring and aberrant behaviour. Try tapping your friends on the nose; if they blink after the third tap, you should be worried. That’s insufficiency of suppression. You learn a lot from Frozen.
Nancy is the resolute and surprisingly light-hearted mum of the disappeared Rhona, trying to survive a life. Digging flowerbeds, tending Rhona’s bedroom, preserving memories, Dianne Lloyd’s character veers from the optimistic to the tortured until one day her daughter’s fate is uncovered. Then begins another chapter, one of reconcilement within the family and more lectures, but these for parents.
The writing, the research, the tightrope balancing portrait of child abductor Ralph is what ultimately takes this play beyond familiar fields. Lee Farley’s evocation is total. Ralph is a loathsome piece of humanity who is nicked, locked up and left to rot. Frozen hints at how journeys like Ralph’s explain but never excuse the worst of actions.
Uncomfortable, uncompromising and inspiring. Perfect Circle is the one to watch this week, in the perfect (and very friendly) prism of the Coach House Theatre. Tonight & Sat 7.30pm, also Sat 2.30pm.
Adrian Mealing
Malvern Gazette