Playing a serial killer in Frozen by Byrony Lavery

Description of the play 'Frozen' written by Bryony Lavery.

“One evening ten year old Rhona goes missing. Her mother Nancy, retreats into a state of frozen hope. Agnetha, an academic, comes to England to research a thesis titled “Serial Killings: A Forgivable Act?” Then there's Ralph, a loner with a bit of a record who’s looking for some distraction … Drawn together by horrific circumstances, these three embark upon a long, dark journey that finally curves upward into the light in this big - brave, compassionate play about grief, revenge, forgiveness and bearing the unbearable.” (The Guardian)

Robert Hewison of The Sunday Times (London) describes it thus: 'A profound, hypnotising drama about the moral and emotional effect on both the relatives of victims and the murderer.... (It) rewards you at last with a sense of understanding and release.'

In Frozen the playwright Bryony Lavery examines the almost unbearable subject of abducted and murdered children ( young girls in this case) but carefully manages to avoid either sensationalism or sentimentality. Her play 'Frozen' has a cast of three characters, (with two extra – non speaking roles in the original text and Birmingham Rep 1998 production) who speak as much to the audience as they do to each other later in the play. The majority of the writing is structured through individual soliloquy and further into the play develops into two person dialogues.

The story:

The mother Nancy, sends her ten year old daughter Rhona round to her grandma's with a pair of secateurs and never sees her again. She conducts her own fraught journey of initial dis-belief and terror at one of her two daughters going missing to that of support for other families in equally terrible strife through a support organisation called FLAME.

The American psychiatrist, Agnetha Gottsmundottir, is exploring an academic theory that child abuse causes profound and pathological changes in the structure of the brain as surely as physical injury does and brings herself, and her clinical and personal convictions, to study Ralph in soliarty confinement and lecture on her findings.

Many years after Rhona disappears, Ralph is caught and it becomes Agnetha's job to interrogate him in prison. It quickly becomes clear that he provides further proof for her theory, in particular that abused children lack the ability to create emotional bonds, that their brains actually look different from those with happier backgrounds.

 

Ralph Ian Wantage is the serial killer of young girls who cares only for his tattoos and his secret collection of child porn videos. He is an isolated obsessive whose sensibilities and conscience are indeed, Frozen. Ralph shows no remorse at all; his only concern is that killing girls isn't legal. He fantasises about a childhood in which he was 'spoilt rotten' and his mum and dad sat around reading poetry. To Nancy, however, he describes a father who washed his mouth out with soap and water and beat him viciously on the side of his head. Forced by Nancy to recognise what he has done, he is unable to cope any more, commits suicide.

Playing Ralph:

The director Gill Scott and the Lace Market Theatre cast discussed the themes of the play at length and I watched the acclaimed film The Woodsman (Kevin Bacon) and read several articles about the grim subject of child abduction and murder. Not easy reading but interesting in trying to understand the motives of the character I was to play. The director and I discussed how he would move, dress, talk and behave and it was agreed that he would dress quite smartly with a shirt and tie and be clean shaven. Most of the first act her wears a casual jacket to hide the tattoos on his arms that were revealed later in the play. We felt that he strove to be as 'normal' as he could be, to avoid detection.

Ralph's character 'celebrates' his killings with a tattoo after each event and as he travels around the   northern parts of the country in his van he gets to know the best tattooists around certain areas. The tattoos were described in the text, that he confesses to the audience. as being all over his body.

The first practical problem that raised itself was how do we do these tattoos? I looked all over for some fake ones that could be applied each night but the tattoos were so specific (Sunburst dagger of Death – Angels fighting with devils) that it would have been very hard to find the right sort. After a fair battle to find a solution the actress playing Agnetha came up with a solution. She had a friend who might be agreeable to coming to the theatre prior to every performance to paint them on my arms. Luckily this young lady was a skilled face painter and applied her skills to creating some false tattoos based on my designs. When he tells the audience of his all over body tattoo prowess I just alluded to the others that were positioned on his back and legs.

 

 

Regarding the speech patterns of Ralph; I decided that his voice would have a slight impatient tone about it except where he got to his need to 'groom' the young girls and gain their trust in accepting a lift in his van from them. Then I changed his tone to something more avuncular as I thought, and the director concurred, his normal gravelly tone would just frighten his victim away. The often staccato text (for Ralph) itself helped in developing this decidedly odd character's way of behaving. He says “obviously” regularly throughout the play which to me indicated a man with very little patience and some of his other language is almost military – 'my centre of operations and logistically' and everything is spoken of as needing to be very organised. When he finally converses with Agnetha and the mother for often fabricates stories of his idyllic early family life and only when the mother presents to him, in a very gentle way,  photos of the daughter he has killed, does the realisation of what he has done start to hit home.

He was a very interesting character to play – some interesting foul language to work with and some dark moments to get through but overall I 'enjoyed' – if that's the word – playing Ralph each night in a very close and confined studio performance where you were very much in the audience's very nervous faces. There is often reference to catharsis in theatrical terms and the way this play ends the audience certainly have a cathartic ending. Obviously!

As the play was very episodic I made myself a list during the later rehearsals to remind myself of my entrances and exits and where I sat in this complex jigsaw of a play. I didn't use it during the week's run but it certainly helped to clarify what was what and indeed where.

Phil Lowe


                                                                     

 Amazon link above to a selection of plays by Byrony Lavery including Frozen. Click on link above to order.

 

Review from the Nottingham Post

Torments in the cold

Frozen by Bryony Lavery

Lace Market Theatre

Alan Geary

'From the moment we hear his harsh and fractured ramblings, and see his awkward gait, darting glances and madly rolling eyes we're convinced that Ralph (Phil Lowe) is a serial killer. This isn't caricature, this is frightening, accomplished acting. And, in the end, Lowe makes his character pathetic.

Bryony Lavery's beautifully wrought play, directed by Gill Scott as a studio piece, takes us deep into the mind of a child murderer.

It's also an exploration of the emotional plights of Nancy (Maeve Doggett), the mother of one of his victims, and Agnetha (Sylvia Robson), a psychiatrist studying the case, torn between professional duty and personal need – shades of Equus here.

Whether she's hanging out the washing or addressing a public meeting, Doggett never lets us forget that she's a soul in anguish.

And Agnetha, with her ringing American voice, professionally assertive but actually as vulnerable as her subjects, is brilliantly captured by Robson.

The three are talking sometimes to the theatre audience, sometimes to the audience at a lecture. And the narrative moves back and forth into different pockets of time. There's strong language and revolting dialogue but it is never gratuitous.

Thematically it's deeply upsetting -obviously; it's also sometimes touching. Despite the worrying confusion between the concepts of psychopath and paedophile, as a piece of theatre it could hardly be more rewarding.'

Alan Geary.

Richard III on the roof of a carpark.

Recently I wrote a blogpost about Richard III and thought it would be fun to attempt the famous first speech by Richard Gloucester ... "Now is the Winter..." and as Richards remains were found under a car park in Leicester what better to place to film this but in a car park. In actuality on 'top' of the car park at Fletcher Gate in Nottingham. The Lace Market Theatre is down below me as I'm acting so it all seemed fitting somehow.

The idea was for a modern day take of the first speech by Richard in Shakespeare's play Richard III. Apologies to WS for some small mis-quotes but as this was practically take 155 and I was freezing up there and I finally felt happy with this last attempt. Plus my hands were like ice blocks from holding the laptop and the biceps brachii muscle in my upper left arm was seizing up big time!

Character-wise I wanted to get Richard's dark sardonic sense of humour into the piece and reflect changes in thought with halting as he moves about the space. Also I considered how the speech itself demonstrates his embittered considerations of how nature has given him a bad deal and his murderous thoughts of betrayal and cunning social climbing.

This video was filmed on my laptop and I wanted Richard to be moving around the space as if it were a stage. I chose this car park because of the tower at the end of the parking area. It made me think of a castle and also symbolic of The Tower of London where the Princes are held in the play. I hope you enjoy my take on this character.

PS: This famous speech is a sod to learn and even more difficult to remember and to perform when there is the potential of folk parking their cars around you!

Finally an English subtitle film of Le Petit Nicholas

I missed this charming Gallic film when it came out last year at my local independent cinema and have eagerly awaited its release on DVD with English subtitles. Finally I got to watch it the other day and was so enraptured / captured by its style and wit that I have watched it three times in total.

 

 

It stars Maxime Godart, (Nicolas) Kad Merad, (the father) and Valérie Lemercier (the mother) and a host of other fabulous acting talent young and older. I particularly liked François Damiens ( the unconventional Scandinavian lover in Delicacy) in his small role as a bickering neighbour.

The film was originally released in 2009 in France and was a huge hit. Why we have to wait for these gems to eventually visit the UK I'll never know. This is a nostalgic, beautifully acted film from the original source of books by the Asterix creator, René Goscinny and set in the 1950s. I loved the set pieces and décor and I wanted to move into the street where Nicholas lives because it is sooo French.

The film is directed by Laurent Tirard (Molière and recently Astérix et Obélix - on his Majesty’s service -2012) and sees the nine year old innocent Nicholas believing that his parents are going to have a baby and his friends have caused him to believe that the older siblings get abandoned in the woods once the new child appears on the scene. When Nicholas becomes convinced his mum is truly pregnant he and his young friends hatch a plan to try and make sure the baby never appears.

The other major child actors (mostly boys and one girl) are superb and must have come from the French version of Central casting. I am not familiar with the drawn stories but these lads are great characters and very funny. They are:

Clotaire – bottom of the class but often comes up trumps

Alceste – fat and eats all the time

Eudes – very strong and likes to whack his friends on the nose

Geoffroy – very rich and his father buys him all that he wants

 

 

Agnan – teacher's pet, tiny and wears glasses – nobody likes him – but is strangely likable

Joachim – already has a little brother who he claims to hate but really loves him

Maixent – has long legs and runs very fast

Rufus – his father is a policeman and he has a police whistle that he likes to blow

Marie – Edwige – confident young girl who likes Nicholas but he is nervous of her because he's not used to girls

The parents of Nicholas (Merad and LeMercier) are brilliantly funny in this in often quite subtle ways. I've always loved the lugubrious Kad Merad since I saw him in the stunningly funny French film – Welcome to the Sticks (Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis). Danny Boon is also a favourite of mine and appears with Kad in the Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis film. I have read the reviews to this film (French with English subtitles) and they all say how brilliantly funny it is.


                                                                     
 

 

 

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blogpost I thought that the design and set pieces for the streets and interiors were magnificent and really gave a feel of a slightly opulent 1950s Urban France. If this whets your appetite then the DVD can be ordered through this link.


                                                                  


I thoroughly recommend it as a fun few hours for the family. The credits are a work of art in themselves! The French really do excel in funny films.

Thoughts around Richard the Third.

Following the recent finding of the remains of King Richard the Third beneath a car park in Leicester I thought I would look back on a production of Shakespeare's 'Richard III' that I was involved in 2008. It was directed by Cynthia Marsh for The Lace Market Theatre in Nottingham and Richard was played by Chris Ireson. Although still of some playing length the play was cut and the dress code a mix of modern and Elizabethan styles. It also played in repertoire with a play called Terrorism by The Presnyakov Brothers with a translation bySasha Dugdale and this was directed by Martin Berry.

The links were the emotion of fear and the chaos and friction that irrational and real fear cause. Some of the cast in Richard III were also in Terrorism. I was not so brave to commit myself to both plays in one week and quite content to gets to grips with the Shakespeare, thank ye all the same.

 

 

The casting for Richard III was for over fifteen actors who often played multiple roles: I, for example; played Derby (Lord Stanley), a gentleman, a citizen, Rivers (brother of Elizabeth; Lord Mayor, Tyrell, Surrey and, to add contrast a bit of humour, a very camp Bishop of Ely.

One young man, new to the theatre and never seen again afterwards, played Grey, Lovell, a guard and one of the murderers and decided that, unfortunately, due to a vigorous bought of projectile vomiting, he couldn't make our last performance on the Saturday matinée. His mother phoned in just one hour before we were due to 'go up' (start the matinée performance) and so the rest of the cast frantically busied around sharing his roles between them. Thankfully his woeful acting skills weren't up to much and he had very few lines, therefore we were able adjust and to get by without him. I think it leant to a much more pacey show! There was certainly a sword sharp edge to the performances that afternoon. We told some friends who had been to see the show and they said they couldn't tell that we had an actor down. There's no business like show business as they say.

To paraphrase Cynthia, the director, she felt that the two plays presented during this exciting week were disparate; one late 16^th Century, one 20^th Century; one presenting a violent King the other presenting modern day violence in all its forms. She said that 'Richard the Third propagandised the founding of the House of Tudor to Elizabethan England beset by its own succession worries. Terrorism locates violence and bullying in the routines of contemporary life: travel, sex, work, gossipping and the banter of the changing room.' Source: programme notes.

Interestingly, the very unusual fact that we had two plays running together during our week long run echoed an almost bygone age of repertory theatre and like our Richard III actors playing several roles, seemingly effortlessly, (historically, known as the sweating lords for very good reason as, like us, they ripped off one costume and donned another set of clothes and identity) they would also have played several parts in Rep. Given the massive amount of Shakespearean text our Richard and the cast had to learn and perform this was no mean feat!

Some interesting things about the play Richard III generally.

• Shakespeare's main source for the play was the historian Raphael Hollinshed and Shakespeare's (strongly Tudor influenced) portrait of Richard took a great deal from Sir Thomas More's work, History of King Richard the Third.

• The ruthless ambition and semi satanic moral code given by Shakespeare to Richard were intended to make the usurpation of Henry VII (grandfather of Queen Elizabeth) seem necessary. Remember that Shakespeare's company needed the financial and royal support of the Queen to exist. The plays written could not afford to be seen as anti Queen Elizabeth or of her line. Heads would roll!

• Some modern day defenders of Richard (the man) believe that Shakespeare's portrayal of him as Richard Gloucester and King Richard in the play are unfair. Alas the play's popularity and continual success in the theatre and in film continues to convince people that he was evil, manipulating and violent.

• Richard III shows off some of Shakespeare's early formal verse at its best. The extraordinary scene where Richard woos the ultra reluctant Anne (act 1 scene II ) gains many of its effects by means of its clever use of parallel, quasi sing song constructions. “Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won?” Despite initially hating him, Anne is won over by his pleas of love and repentance and agrees to marry him. When she leaves, Richard exults in having won her over despite all he has done to her, and tells the audience that he will discard her once she has served her purpose. Nice guy! Poor gal!

• Other courtly women in the play hate the manipulating king more and more as he plots the murders of children and adults alike on his rise to corruption and power. The distraught Queen Margaret exemplifies this point in her famous speech lamenting the existence of King Richard and his terrible deeds: we join the speech at it's climax here:

Queen Margaret: ... No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine, unless it be while some tormenting dream fright's thee with a hell of ugly devils! Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog! Thou that was sealed in thy nativity the slave of nature and the son of hell! Thou slander of thy heavy mother's womb! Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins! Thou detested...

Richard: Margaret.

Queen Margaret: Richard!!

• In the play, Clarence dies after Richard is named Protector (how ironic!): in reality, Clarence died five years beforehand. Here and elsewhere William Shakespeare the playwright took historical liberties to dramatically construct his play.

Famous critics have said:

“Crimes are Richard's delights but Macbeth is always in agony when he thinks of them” (Thomas Whately)

“The hump... the conscience, the fear of ghosts, all impart a spice of outragousness which leaves nothing lacking to the fun of the entertainment, except the solemnity of those spectators that feel bound to take the affair as a profound and subtle historic play.” (George |Bernard Shaw)

“There is another peculiarity of the present drama which ought to be mentioned – the frequent use of the curse, it is a terrific weapon and is employed here with terrific violence. (Denton J Snider).

My recommendations in books and films:

Year of the King by Anthony Sher: I read this back in the 1980s and it is a very accessible record of Anthony Sher's acceptance of the role of King Richard for the RSC and Barbican and his journey as an actor to discover another way of portraying the crippled king with the ghost of Laurence Oliver's well known depiction of Richard III on his heels. This terrific book is also illustrated with Sher's wonderful sketches and drawings. Highly recommended.


                                                                    

Richard III: The 1996 film with Sir Ian McKellan playing the title role is set in Britain in the 1930s and offers yet another slant on duplicitous evil. In this version civil war has erupted with the House of Lancaster on one side, claiming the right to the British throne and hoping to bring freedom to the country. Opposing is the House of York, commanded by the infamous Richard who rules over a fascist government and hopes to install himself as a dictator monarch. The film is severely edited for text but gives a very clear depiction to Richard's rise to power and his downfall through violent means. I would encourage anyone to watch this as a lesson in film acting and as an encouragement to delve further into the play itself.


                                                                     

Looking for Richard starring Al Pacino: A documentary style film about Al Pacino's quest to find the inspiration to play the role of King Richard III.

                                                                            

Lace Market Theatre production photographs by Mark James. Copyright.