Geva Theater Center, Rochester' leading professional theater, in a generous gesture, is presenting 14 regional theater companies in a 2007-2008 theaterfest program, each visiting company offering one work from its current season in Geva's intimate Nextstage, which is usually reserved for development of new plays. Currently in the Nextstage, Shipping Dock Theater, a daring, small company which has introduced challenging plays to Rochester for about 40 years, is performing Bryony Lavery's Frozen.
Frozen is an oddly poetic play, considering its origins in uncomfortable neuroscientific theory that a criminal act -- in this case, the rape and murder of children by a pedophile -- "is a symptom of a brain disorder or illness that should be treated rather than punished," and its author's purpose to "explore our fears and the nature of forgiveness." Its story comes from the actual discovery of a number of frozen bodies of little girls kidnapped and murdered by a man who was caught, interrogated and studied. We look at Nancy, the mother of a ten-year-old girl who was one of those victims; Agnetha, the scientist studying the murderer; Ralph, the young murderer; and a guard.
As rivetingly played by Patricia Lewis, Nancy is, at first, a fairly ordinary mother who goes through horror, disbelief, and fury for revenge, to a woman so intolerably torn by events that she comes to desire understanding and some sort of closure through formally forgiving her child's murderer. Kerry Young's equally involving Agnetha ultimately cannot reconcile her fascination toward the subject with her need for personal acceptance and a sense of accomplishment. Kevin Sweeney's Ralph begins with uncanny openness but, after capture, reveals a nervous sensitivity that seems more pitiable than menacing. When Nancy does eventually meet him -- against Agnetha's strong opposition, Lewis makes her so tightly controlled and cold that although she forgives Ralph, she seems to barely feel anything toward him; clearly, what she feels is an overpowering drive to free herself. Ralph, however, is oddly undone by the experience, which perhaps leads to his suicide.
This odd play is never less than compelling, at times almost hypnotically so. But I found myself informed and fascinated, moved at times by the mother, but ultimately turned away. There is a sense of resolution, but it is frozen in distance, awakening no impulse to return.
