GableStage begins its new season with the Florida premiere of Frozen, a play that opened Off-Broadway last winter and transferred to Broadway in the spring. In South Florida's autumn, it's a too-often overheated enterprise. Production values reflect what the playwright hints at, but Joseph Adler directs not at a cool remove but at a gallop. This leaves the audience struggling to catch up -- an unfortunate situatiion, given the efforts of the actors.
Bryony Lavery's play deals with the aftermath of a child's abduction and murder in England by a serial killer -- in particular the effect on her mother, the killer, and a woman researching the question, "Is serial killing a forgivable act?" The ice blue set by Jeff Quinn is interrupted only by the pink trappings of a 10-year-old girl's bedroom that for years remains frozen in time and by the center-stage suggestion of an English garden. Full marks go to Michael J. Hoffmann, who does double duty as composer of the techno-tinged incidental music and as designer of the sound effects. When the play moves the researcher from conversation to lecture hall, Hoffmann subtly delivers the voice with the slightly metallic sound we know from microphones. The cast always look right in the costumes by Karelle Levy, even if the actors' early pitch seems off.
Gordon McConnell plays the killer, Ralph, who is florid and seething when we first encounter him. The actresses -- Bridget Connors as the Icelandic researcher trying to discriminate between acts of evil and acts of illness, and Lisa Morgan as the mother of a victim -- steam through their opening speeches. But all three deliver effective moments that eventually let the audience join the journey.
