It’s unsettling enough to consider attending a play about an unrepentant child rapist and murderer.
But “Frozen” has little to do with pedophilia. It’s about one woman’s need to forgive, and another’s need to believe malevolent behavior can be – indeed, must be – somehow explained away by science.
Turns out, watching that play out is far more unsettling.
From Columbine killer Eric Harris to Denver rapist Brent Brents, it’s human nature to seek some sort of medical reason for brutal crimes, if only so we can sleep at night. If heinous acts cannot be ascribed to frontal-lobe damage or chemical imbalances, we might have to live with the fact that pure evil not only exists in this world – it’s living down your street, third house on the left.
As was bluntly illustrated in the film “Crash,” nothing tosses disparate characters together like random acts of violence: Saints and sinners, rich and poor, white and … anyone not. Bryony Lavery’s “Frozen” represents a vicious collision of middle-class decency; dry academia; and raw, meticulous evil. Her central question is whether any strain of humanity can survive its impact.
Curious Theatre Company’s disturbing yet stirring regional premiere, directed by the Denver Center Theatre Company’s great Anthony Powell, is intensely and exquisitely acted; viewing it is a joy and a horror.
Though annoyingly apologetic of criminals, this unusual play speaks volumes about an unspeakable subject. While you kind of know all along where the play must be going, the question is whether you buy into its inevitable journey toward forgiveness. In Powell’s hands, what seems implausible in premise becomes utterly believable in performance.
That’s thanks to three deeply meaningful characterizations from Diana Dresser, Kathryn Gray and the astonishing William Hahn. Dresser is Agnetha, an American behavioral psychologist whose own neurotic behavior is akin to an emotional train wreck. She embarks on a 10-year study of the brain abnormalities in a serial child killer named Ralph (Hahn) to prove that such men are not ultimately responsible for their actions, that “the difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.”
It’s easy enough to see why Lavery chose to make Agnetha’s own brain chemistry a bottle of Prozac shy of stable. Her overriding purpose is to spew scientific “facts” into the dialogue; making her otherwise a mess makes her more character and less mouthpiece.
Nancy is the British mum of a girl named Rhona whom Ralph assaulted and buried 20 years before. Gray is wrenching in a role that easily could have slumped into sentimental syrup. Instead Gray completes a monstrous emotional arc with a welcome caustic humor, from her naive insistence that Rhona is alive, to needing to see Ralph dead, to finally foisting her forgiveness onto this man who neither seeks nor wants it. This is no act of benevolence – her survival depends on it.
Still, see “Frozen” just to try seeing directly into Hahn’s frightening face. His Ralph is a smart, cold-blooded killer who says flatly, “The only thing I’m sorry about is that it’s not legal – killing girls, I mean.”
Yet Hahn makes him not only efficient but understandable and necessarily alluring. How else could he have gone undetected for so long? He describes the cradling of his true-crime videos with the same loving longing that Nancy describes finally being able to cradle her daughter’s skull.
Like the chest tattoo depicting a great battle between demons and angels, Ralph is impossibly plausible. Forgivable? That’s your call.
The play’s title applies to all things frozen – Nancy’s life in limbo, a part of Ralph’s brain, Agnetha’s personal life. Much in Powell’s production complements that notion. Matthew Morgan’s soundtrack even includes a track from pianist George Winston’s album “December,” and Susan Crabtree’s monochrome gray set design evokes a kind of coldness, though it is otherwise a vague and unrealized conceit.
Be forewarned, this script is primarily a series of expository monologues, with only four of 31 scenes containing character interaction. Lavery seems to be saying that while these three are forever bound by circumstance, there is no real connection among them.
Twenty years after the crash, there is no storybook epiphany, just an uneasy coexistence between those who live on with a moral compass – and those who do not.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
*** 1/2 | “Frozen”
DRAMA|Curious Theatre Company|Written by Bryony Lavery|Directed by Anthony Powell|Starring William Hahn, Diana Dresser and Kathryn Gray|At the Acoma Center, 1080 Acoma St.|THROUGH FEB. 25|8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 25 minutes|$20-$30 (2-for-1 Thursdays)|303-623-0524 or curioustheatre.org
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“THE RAFT” Modern Muse Theatre Company’s new world premiere picks up where Denver playwright Coleen Hubbard’s 1991 play “Motherload” left off, with three original cast members returning (Martha Harmon Pardee, Gracie Carr and Julie Elstun Payne). Marta is facing her 50th birthday, a stagnant marriage and an unexpected midlife crush. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 26 at the Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo St. $12-$20 (303-780-7836 or modernmusetheatre.com).
“THE SECRET GARDEN” Performance Now presents the classic tale of an orphaned girl who restores life to her grieving uncle and his sick son. 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Jan. 29 at the Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 S. Allison Parkway. $12-$18 (303-987-7845 or performancenow.org).
“A WALK IN THE WOODS” The Mercury Motley Players are staging “A Walk in the Woods,” directed by Elizabeth Rose, and starring Craig Osterberg and Phil Luna, at 7:30 p.m. Saturdays only through Feb. 25 at the Mercury Café, 2199 California St. $15 (303-294-9258). “Marx in Soho,” starring Christopher Kendall, continues at 7:30 p.m. Fridays only through Jan. 28.
“THE FEMALE ODD COUPLE” Neil Simon’s 1965 comedy about two male divorced roommates was revised by the author for performance by two women. Directed by Robert Wells (“Kiss Me, Kate!”). 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays though Feb. 13 at the Littleton Town Hall Arts Center, 2450 W. Main St. $23-$28 (303-794-2787).
-John Moore
