Frozen: Pangdemonium’s Most Chilling Play Yet
PUBLISHED October 13th, 2014 04:00 pm | UPDATED January 20th, 2016 02:11 pm
Following ‘Fat Pig’ and ‘The Rise and Fall of Little Voice’, Pangdemonium Theatre will conclude its 2014 season with ‘Frozen’ by British playwright Bryony Lavery, directed by Tracie Pang, starting next week.
Starring Adrian Pang, Karen Tan and Janice Koh, let us say straight off that this production has nothing to do with the Walt Disney animated film of the same name. Forget the funny snowman, the reindeer and the song ‘Let It Go’ – in fact, kids can’t enter unless they’re 16 or older.
Pangdemonium calls itself Singapore’s most ‘kick-ass theatre company’, and it most definitely lives up to its name. Their 2013 musical, ‘Next To Normal’ bagged both Production of the Year and Production of the Year (Readers’ Choice) at the Life Theatre Awards this year. Adrian Pang also picked up the Best Actor prize for ‘Rabbit Hole’, a heartrending drama about a family coming to terms with the loss of a child.
The Story
One sunny morning 10-year-old Rhona goes missing. Her mother Nancy (Karen Tan), retreats into a state of frozen hope…for the next twenty years. Does ‘closure’, mean forgiveness? Or revenge?
Agnetha (Janice Koh) is a pioneering psychiatrist with a controversial theory on serial killers. Her thesis: whether serial killing may be considered a forgivable act. Does she really believe what she preaches, even as she fights her own demons?
And then there’s Ralph (Adrian Pang), a loner with a fractured history and a deadly obsession. Is he a monster? Or a misunderstood man-child?
Drawn together by horrific circumstances, these three individuals embark upon a dark, tangled and twisted journey, uncovering one another’s skeletons and ghosts before finally finding the light. A metaphor for the emotional paralysis of the characters, ‘Frozen’ is a shocking, searing, and ultimately, sensitive study of the fragile human psyche that examines the ‘melting’ of the three protagonists. The play throws the spotlight on what forgiveness, retribution, redemption, and hope means.
We Chat with the Director and Cast of Frozen
Why did Pangdemonium decide on “Frozen” for its last production of 2014?
Tracie: We found this play intriguing, it was a well-written piece that explores the psychology of a killer, and the journey of the victims’ family through a very unusual story telling method. The play and the questions it brings up were interesting and shocking and yet the playwright had also injected humour into the characters as well. We felt that it was a story that our audience members would enjoy and a reminder to us of making our children aware of the perils in society so as to protect them.
What were your biggest challenges when it comes to directing this play?
Tracie: The structure of this play is very different from any other that I have done before. The majority of it is told through monologues, so I need to find a way to express the characters connections and emotional relationships without them actually conversing with anyone. On top of that, each scene is set in a variety of different places and within a scene, the setting morphs so I had to find a way to create that environment.
Tell us about your character in “Frozen” and the biggest challenge you encountered while playing this role?
Adrian: Ralph is a loner, a misfit, a man whose personal history of abandonment and abuse as a child has moulded him into the shadow of a human being he is today. He’s based on a real-life convicted serial killer, Robert Black, who terrorized young girls across the UK for decades before he was finally arrested, and is still serving 12 life sentences today.
I find Ralph an endlessly fascinating and intriguing character, full of surprises and sadness. He has great difficulty expressing his haphazard thoughts and articulating his brittle emotions – it’s like his traumatic past has kept him “frozen” in a state of stunted development as a person. So he lacks the reasoning of a grown-up, and he also has a disturbing child-like naivety and “charm” about him.
He seems like a hollow shell of a person, with a shockingly tenuous grasp of right and wrong, good and bad. But as his personal story unravels gradually, he’s revealed to be an oddly pitiful creature. What Ralph does is every child’s greatest fear and every parent’s worst nightmare, and as an actor playing this character, the challenge is to keep my personal feelings about him and his actions at bay, and try to uncover some shred of humanity where there appears to be none. “Frozen” offers a glimpse into his twisted psychology and his fractured history, to show you what a waste of humanity he had become and how all our lives are so incredibly fragile.
Janice: A psychologist from New York who travels to London to deliver a lecture, and to further her research on the workings of the criminal mind, Agnetha reveals a series of conversations she has with Ralph over the course of the play. She believes that criminals, like Ralph, are not entirely to blame for their acts of violence, as many of them experience physical trauma to the brain in childhood. Her theory raises an important but controversial issue in the area of criminal justice. Are they crimes of evil or symptoms of an illness, and therefore forgivable?
Agnetha, herself, has recently suffered a deep loss in her personal life, which explains her rather erractic, emotional and unstable state as the play opens. The audience, however, is not privy to her full story until the very end. Her behaviour is somewhat alienating, and that presents some challenges in terms of getting the audience to empathise or understand your point of view. Furthermore, she is Icelandic American – which I think is a challenge in itself!
Karen: I play Nancy, an ordinary mother, whose life becomes extraordinary when her child is kidnapped and murdered by the character played by Adrian Pang. Honestly, the biggest challenge so far is explaining to people that this is NOT the Disney musical, and there is NO ice, or polyester blue dresses, and certainly no flamboyant snowmen!
What do you think of the play and will it appeal to the audience in Singapore?
Adrian: Frozen is an extraordinary, enlightening play, because it throws up tough questions in very provocative and surprisingly compassionate ways. It’s fantastic that Singapore audiences are proving themselves ready to engage in this kind of challenging theatre, and Pangdemonium audiences in particular are hungry to be told these kinds of stories – stories that have an emotional, psychological and visceral impact, and relate to us as individuals in our community in unexpected, profound ways. I really think Frozen is going to be unlike anything most Singapore audiences have experienced before.
Karen: Sometimes we worry that a particular subject may be too shocking or controversial. But when you consider what you can read and see online, I think we have to forget about these insecurities, and concentrate on producing a piece that is thought-provoking, that will lead to discussions and arguments about morality, about choices, and about good storytelling, all in a language that is confident and clear.
Janice: As an actor, I honestly have to say, it is a difficult piece. The subject matter is not an easy one, and the exploration of themes like justice, revenge and forgiveness can be quite dark. But I hope the play’s humanity and its search for truth will bring the audience on an engaging and provocative journey, from start to finish. Surprisingly, there is also quite a bit of humour in the play, so it’s really not as morbid as I make it out to be!
What do you hope is the message the audience will take home with them after watching “Frozen’?
Tracie: To be thankful for the safety of which we live in here in Singapore but also a reminder that we are not completely safe. There are still people that prey on children out there and we must do what we can to protect our families and loved ones.
Frozen is running 23 October to 9 November 2014 at the Esplanade Theatre Studio. UOB credit and debit cardholders are entitled to a 15% discount. For more information and tickets, see SISTIC.
