The Ice-Breaker, in its Los Angeles premiere at Theater 40, is David Rambo's two-hander about a reclusive, once-famous scientist, Dr Lawrence Blanchard (Robert Mackenzie) and his would-be disciple, Sonia Milan (Ashleigh Sumner), who shows up uninvited at his adobe in Arizona.
Sonia, a chunky, aggressive young woman, is a geology student whose doctoral thesis deals with the issue of global warming -- the very subject Lawrence specialized in, thanks to his many research trips to Antarctica. Sonia's also been to Antarctica, first as a rebellious 17-year-old on an "Outward Bound" trip, then as a fledgling and ambitious scientist determined to make her mark by proving that a new Ice Age is upon us, caused of course by global-warming.
Lawrence at first balks at reading her thousand-page thesis, not just because he finds her argument to be dogmatic and blind to nature's contradictions and ambiguities, but because he has withdrawn from life and all its battles. In other words, he himself has fallen victim to the ice he once studied so assiduously. Lawrence is cold and dead inside, having been abandoned by his wife and deprived by death of his beloved baby daughter. He is convinced that God punishes those who have too much knowledge -- and that he is slowly going mad.
Sonia can't stomach this kind of defeatist talk from her idol and fights valiantly to chop through the ice that has formed around Lawrence's heart, only to discover in the course of things that she herself has a frozen core.
The Ice-Breaker, then, begins as an intellectual argument (science vs. art) and becomes a love story. Rambo deals with these themes in skillful fashion (a veteran dramatist, his God's Man in Texas is ranked in 10th place as the most-produced play in regional theaters). The Ice-Breaker is an intelligent, thoughtful piece of work, but ultimately its talkiness and predictability get the best of it. Lack of chemistry between the two actors is another negative factor.
