Frozen

Published Friday 4 July 2008 at 11:25 by Natasha Tripney

This revival of Bryony Lavery’s questioning, powerful play serves as a perfect reminder of just how good a writer Lavery is at her best. Sonia Fraser’s production is competent rather than revelatory, allowing the text to speak for itself.

Frozen is an amazing play - gripping, unnerving, yet shot through with startling humour. A young girl has disappeared, but her mother refuses to give up hope - she knows her daughter will come home. Years pass and eventually the girl’s remains are found, only a few feet from the spot where she vanished. A man is arrested for her murder and those of other young girls. Can the mother ever find it in herself to forgive? Or, at least, come to understand how one human being could do such things to another?

Lavery tackles this question with a commendable lack of sentimentality, exploring how people can be broken both physically and emotionally. The small cast - it is essentially a three hander, with one silent fourth player - handle their roles with real grace, especially Dorothy Lawrence as the girl’s mother. She is well matched by Rosalind Cressy, as the American clinical psychologist prone to panic attacks of her own, and Jack James, as the convicted child murderer.