What's theatre for? Is it just a parlour game where one set of people try to convince another group that they are other people entirely? Or is it something more?

Bryony Lavery's impressive play Frozen attempts to do at least two important things. One is to reveal things not known, aspects of the nature of psychosis. The second is to challenge values regarding the nature of sex crimes, and particularly those inflicted on children.

Rosalind Cressy is the vulnerable American psychiatrist, Agnetha, who comes to London researching the nature of serial killing. Her ideas are centred on killing as the result of an illness; it is 'a symptom and not a sin', as she puts it. Dorothy Lawrence (Nancy) is the mother of two girls, one of whom, aged just 10 years, is abducted, sexually assaulted and killed by the eerily creepy Ralph (Jack James) who becomes one of Agnetha's subjects.

Two stories take place in parallel: the unravelling of Ralph's psychosis and the journey of his victim's mother, from rage and passion to something else. What that is, is never really revealed, with a choice from a range of emotions.

The first act is as horrible as anything in an Elizabethan revenge tragedy. The economical way in which the killer is shown plying his trade is a little masterpiece of stagecraft. Put that alongside the terrible blow to the girl's family – her mother one moment deciding which of her daughters she should send to their grandmother's, the next moment having found that her decision was a death sentence – and there is true drama that dives beneath the frozen surface of the emotions and newspaper headlines.

Having plunged into barbarity, the play then asks whether forgiveness is possible.

The second act doesn't quite have the same edge as the first. It seems to probe a little too much and for too long. Tighter could have been better. Maybe by being a bit looser, director Sonia Fraser reduces the tension.

But this is a tremendous play, stylishly performed. Jack James is particularly resonant as every parent's nightmare, the damaged and damaging psychopath whose sickness cannot be cured, but who reveals the depth of his illness with every statement he makes – particularly in the Pinter-like lists that the psychiatrist encourages him to develop. Rosalind Cressy gets the psychiatrist just right – coolly professional with Ralph, while a mess in her private life. Dorothy Lawrence as Nancy is economical and the more moving for that.

This play has so many small moments of terror and revelation – the mother telling how she holds her daughter's skull in her hands – that it would be invidious to try to catalogue them. Every one adds a facet to the moral confusion.

Frozen, revived from its initial production in 1998, deserves to be a staple of theatre. This is an excellent production which really does reveal what theatre should be about.

Cast Credits: (alpha order): Carl Chandler - Guard/ASM. Rosalind Cressy - Agnetha. Jack James - Ralph. Dorothy Lawrence - Nancy.

Company Credits: Writer - Bryony Lavery. Director - Sonia Fraser. Designer - Lucy Wilkinson. Lighting - Derek Carlyle. Sound Designer - Rebecca Smith. Set Builder - Will Wilkinson. Technical Operator - uncredited. Press - Elin Morgan (Prospero Communications). Producer - Rosalind Cressy & Dorothy Lawrence. Company - Fresh Glory Productions.

END

(c) Michael Spring 2008

reviewed Wednesday, 3 July 2008 / Riverside Studios

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com