Frozen delves into mind of a monster

Bryony Lavery’s award-winning psychological drama (first seen at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith in June) is given a fresh production by director Sonia Fraser and plays for three nights only in SE10 before going on national tour.

The play, while ostensibly about "the exploration of the frozen Arctic Sea that is the criminal brain" is also about the nature of forgiveness and remorse.

The tormented Nancy (Dorothy Lawrence) asks to meet Ralph (Jack James), the man who raped and murdered her 10-year-old daughter some years previously.

The prison meetings are witnessed by an American psychologist (Rosalind Cressy) keen to determine if Ralph’s heinous crime was predetermined by his genetic make-up or caused by childhood trauma of his own. The action takes place over two decades.
The play, which some will know from its National Theatre staging in 2002, was written at a time when this country appeared to be obsessed with the notion that there was a paedophile on every street corner.

Fraser’s production, however, has the advantage of the passage of time. In her reading of the work, she shifts its focus from the evil deeds of one man to the restorative justice and reparation for which most of us yearn.

Lavery is, shamefully, a still underrated playwright in this country. Few write with her compassion and humanity, qualities seen in abundance in Frozen, which also challenges the audience’s knee-jerk responses to certain criminal acts and therefore has been called controversial — but surely drama works best when it discomforts us most.

While the three-hander is terrifically and tautly written, it’s not all dark as there are touches of Lavery’s trademark gritty humour throughout.
And ultimately we see the possibility of at least partial recovery for Nancy from her numbing grief.

Until Wednesday (020 8858 7755, www.greenwichtheatre.org.uk)

Frozen