Tuesday 27th February - Saturday 3rd March 2007
Directed by John Batstone
One sunny evening ten year-old Rhona goes missing. Her mother, Nancy, retreats into a state of frozen hope. Yet her need to understand leads her to seek a confrontation with her daughter’s killer, while a pioneering psychologist attempts to prove that this man’s crimes are motivated by illness, rather than evil.
Frozen is a dramatic journey through the 20th century’s last great taboo. An evening of theatre that is tense, horrific and exciting.
"A major play… thrilling, humane and timely" The Times
Frozen was first performed in 1998 and won the Best New Play Award. Kate Kellaway interviewed Bryony Lavery for The Observer in 2002 when the play opened at The National. This is part of what she wrote:- 'If you were asked to guess, you would suppose Frozen to have emerged out of the Sarah Payne case: it mirrors it so closely. A girl disappears, murdered by a paedophile, leaving her family's life disfigured. How did Lavery feel when reality turned into a dire impersonator of art? She murmurs: 'There was something iconic about it - the child snatched from a cornfield - unbearable.' And while there was 'no connection' in rational terms between the play and Sarah Payne, Lavery acknowledges the synchronicity observing the odd way in which, when one becomes focused on a subject, it's suddenly everywhere. She has felt, she says, like a 'magnet picking up iron filings'.
Frozen was first produced at the Birmingham Rep in 1998 and won the TMA Best New Play Award and Eileen Anderson Central Television Award for Best Play. The play was revised and revived in the Cottesloe Theatre at the National Theatre in July 2002.
Original Cast (Birmingham and Cottesloe):
Agnetha - Josie Lawrence
Ralph - Tom Georgeson
Nancy - Anita Dobson
Director - Bill Alexander
This Bench production is the revised version.
| Agnetha | Megan Green |
| Ralph | Nathan Chapman |
| Nancy | Ingrid Corrigan |
| Guard | Sean Buchan |
| The Voice of David | Darryl Wakelin |
| Director | John Batstone |
| Producer | Andrew Caple |
| Stage Manager | Jo Wakelin |
| Assistant Stage Manager | Sally Hartley |
| Set Design | Peter Woodware |
| Lighting Design | Andrew Caple |
| Lighting Operator | Julie Wood |
| Sound Design and Operator | Darryl Wakelin |
| Photography | Peter di Fonzo |
The action takes place in New York, Northern England, London, a lecture theatre, Nancy’s home and a prison cell.
When I first came across 'Frozen' four years ago I was struck by its timeliness and sad relevance to the world we live in. This has been reinforced this week with the publication of the UNICEF report of where Britain stands in its concern and treatment of children among the world's 21 richest nations. A shaming last position.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that Bryony Lavery's play will put this right. But it will surely help to focus our concern. Ralph's early child abuse and the easy availability of the material he lovingly collects is a painful reminder of the horrendous consequences that the evil we meet in the media everyday can produce.
Part of Nancy's emergence from her frozen grief is her slow realisation of the love she has denied Bridget, her living child. It's a moving moment when she recounts her return after years of effectual rejection, "Hello, Mum. It’s me."
As Agnetha points the way in public when she asks, "What discoveries do we bring back from that foreign terrain (the criminal brain) to help make our own inner and outer landscape warmer safer kinder better?"
I have been a Bench member for 13 years (not I trust an unhappy omen) and never once regretted the nearly 40 mile round trip I have to make, often on a small motor bike, to come to meetings, Club nights, auditions, rehearsals and performances. Not to mention social jollies. This is because I know I am going to meet genial, enthusiastic folk whose appetite for theatre knows no bounds. To this enthusiasm The Bench adds, as well as a variety of talents, enormous energy and a willingness to work hard....this usually on top of a full working life. All these together provide a consistent level of performance across five or six productions each year which makes their work enjoyed and admired across the region.
Amongst various others I have been involved, as actor or director, in plays as diverse as Habeas Corpus, Our Country's Good, Much Ado About Nothing, Racing Demon, Broken Glass, Top Girls, A Memory of Water and The Weir. It is this diversity coupled with the preparedness to take on challenges which is the keynote of the company.
The last few months demonstrate this beautifully. Almost the whole company was involved since last summer in the vast technical and imaginative undertaking of His Dark Materials. The production was notable for its combined activity, its ingenuity and the way it stimulated the mind and the imagination. The creation and presentation of the deamons, for example, were remarkable.
No sooner was the last prop put away after HDM than work began on tonight's play, Frozen. Indeed the play had been cast already. It is difficult to conceive of two more different productions. In conception, size and scope they are poles apart. But both plays present challenges, to the company and its audiences alike. Like its predecessor Frozen contains dark materials, but like it, the playwright, Bryony Lavery addresses them positively without sentimentality or sensationalism, and above all with integrity.
Personally, after fifty years of theatre -going, I believe in the theatre both as a place of escaping and delight, 'pure pleasure' as you may say. But also as a place where we can confront serious issues in our own lives and in the world around us, perhaps asking questions of ourselves in the process. Put another way, not simply to confirm our prejudices but to open our minds and sensibilities to other possibilities. To do this may, of course, be uncomfortable but, one hopes, if the play and the performance is good enough, finally enriching. Cathartic, as the old word has it. This play bravely tackles harshly real subjects: child abuse, paedophilia, child murder, from a range of perspectives. Some may think these are taboo areas. Unfortunately they are with us all the time. What do our responses tell us about ourselves as human beings?
The three people in this play are all frozen: one in hope, then pain, another in obsession and another in conviction about her theories. During the course of the action, over twenty years for two of the characters, the metaphorical ice floes melt and more is revealed to them and to us, hitherto unacknowledged or denied facets of what it is to be human.
The way the play is structured reinforces this progress. We move from monologue to duologue as contact with another is established or explored. But never, we notice, do all three meet together. What does this tell us?
This process is intriguing and intensely dramatic. Herein lies the skill of the writing. The audience is drawn in and held on the edge of their seats and can undertake with these people a journey from darkness to some sort of light. There is pain, of course, but because as used to be said of one of the national newspapers, 'all human life is there', there is pleasure as well. (There are even jokes!) When the play was performed at the National Theatre four years ago, to universal accolades, the part of Agnetha was played by a well-known T.V. comedienne.
Last year Frozen was one of the most produced plays in the U.S. In this country there were successful productions in Bath and Keswick that I know of. We are pleased and privileged to be offering it to this part of the UK for the first time we think.
John Batstone
Feb 15th 2007
Megan Green joined The Bench only 18 months ago with a sense of trepidation! She had not set foot on or near a stage for over 10 years and having seen Supernova 3, she knew the standards were very high! She came to a Club Night knowing absolutely NO-ONE and, thinking that nearly everyone was in some way related to one another or had known each other for 20 odd years, her nerves nearly got the better of her! But she was made very welcome and is so glad she stuck with it. Although 2006 was a tough year for her health wise, she was delighted to be involved in His Dark Materials at Christmas playing... well, several roles!
"Most of my teens and twenties were taken up by theatre, both professional and non-professional. The parts I have enjoyed playing most have been Viola in Twelfth Night and Christine in Stephen Poliakoff's Shout Across The River. I have also had the opportunity to perform at the Minack Theatre in Cornwall - an amazing experience! I toured with a number of theatre companies and appeared in lots of plays with 'Vicar' and 'Trousers' in the title. I even understudied Barbara Windsor on a summer season in Jersey, but that's another story! I gave it all up to have babies, dogs, make soup and get a proper job and here I am now.
I was intrigued by Frozen from the outset - when I read it I found the writing very powerful. I have two children the same age as Nancy's so was obviously deeply moved by the disturbing subject matter. The most challenging aspect of playing psychologist Agnetha (apart from learning the technical speeches) is believing in her scientific diagnosis of Ralph's condition. Not too many people can empathize with her - but she has this great ability to become the 'Comedienne' when the going gets tough - an aspect of human nature I admire. I've really enjoyed working with the highly experienced likes of Nathan, Ingrid and John and am learning from them every day."
Ingrid Corrigan has been a member of Bench Theatre for over 30 years and has played a wide range of parts, starting with Tilburnia in The Critic. Some of her favourite roles are Hedda Gabler, Mrs Alving in Ghosts, Arkadina in The Seagull, Maggie in Dancing at Lughnasa and Lily in Freedom of the City. She has worked with John Batstone before in Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass in 1999. Some of the plays Ingrid has directed are As You Like It, Outside Edge, Bedroom Farce and Comedy of Errors. She has also worked on many shows backstage and in the lighting box.
"I was concerned about the subject matter of Frozen when it was first proposed, but after reading the script I knew it was a play which needed to be done and that I really wanted to play Nancy. I always enjoy getting into the shoes of another character, but I can’t remember being so moved as I have been standing in Nancy Shirley’s shoes. The script itself is a dream to work on and learn – a combination of poetry and naturalistic speech. But living through Nancy’s domestic life, her grief, her hope, her despair has been a wonderful, heart-wrenching journey."
Nathan Chapman is the current Chairman of Bench Theatre. He joined the company in 1998, stepping into the breach in Much Ado About Nothing when a gap in the casting appeared. Since then he has been continually active in a number of capacities, and he lists his favourite acting roles to date as being Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, Tony Ferris in Racing Demon, Michael Peters in The Golden Pathway Annual and Romeo in Romeo & Juliet. He has also directed, firstly a co-directorship on King Lear, followed by a solo outing with Edward Bond’s Saved. As an enthusiastic writer, Nathan was responsible for starting the Bench’s festival of new writing, Supernova, which will enter its fourth manifestation this September.
"Ralph is a role that comes with its own ready-made baggage. It is very difficult to ignore the demonising representations of serial killers and sex offenders that have been perpetuated in the media over the last few years. However unsavoury, I felt the crucial first step was to regard Ralph as a human being over and above anything else. In so many ways Ralph is a dream role for an actor who wishes to be stretched beyond his limits, and it is a challenge I have keenly felt and relished.
I think it is wrong for actors to judge their characters, whether this means condemning them or defending them, but I do think it is important to understand the person you are playing, in much the same way that Agnetha wants people to understand the nature of Ralph’s 'illness' Nevertheless, the deeds he has done, the things he says in the play and his apparently remorseless attitude made it difficult to reconcile the need to understand and the natural revulsion that most of us will feel towards him. I was lucky to have had the opportunity to get some advice from Judith Bodenham at an early rehearsal. Judith had worked at HMP Kingston and so came into direct contact with people like Ralph as part of her job. She said that the most notable characteristics of this 'type' of criminal were their banality and their childishness, that there was something acutely ordinary about them yet, at the same time, something creepy. This became something I was determined to bring out in the role, and I felt it helped me to avoid the Hannibal Lecter portrayal that it could have become so easy to lapse into."
Every now and then a critic's objectivity is challenged when they are subjected to a piece that produces in them an extreme of passion. It can be either hatred or love of the show in question but the objectivity is challenged, regardless. I loved Frozen as a piece of writing – but did I love Bench Theatre’s presentation?
Well, yes I did.
John Batstone’s production of what is essentially a three-hander is strong stuff, and in the very capable hands of Nathan Chapman, Ingrid Corrigan and Megan Green, Bryony Lavery’s script really does take flight. It’s not easy subject matter either – a woman coming to terms with the death of her child at the hands of a paedophile. But there are surprising, lighter moments here and there and, all told, it’s expertly handled.
Chapman is, frankly, stunning as the paedophile, Ralph. That’s a performance and a half. Both Corrigan and Green are up there, too, but the very nature of the role left me astounded at Chapman’s work.
Vocally, Corrigan reached the heights, although I wish she and Batstone could have found more physical variety in her performance, and Green’s American accent slipped very occasionally. But these are criticisms for the sake of criticism.
The play is dark, its language fetid and foul but its soul is big, shiny and profound. Highly recommended.
JAMES GEORGE, Portsmouth News