7th to 15th February.
Fingersmiths with Birmingham Repertory Theatre present
FROZEN
By Bryony Lavery.
Directed by Jeni Draper.
Bryony Lavery’s multi-award-winning play, Frozen, opens at Birmingham Repertory Theatre this Spring ahead of a tour. This new production, presented by Fingersmiths and The REP, brings a new dimension to the play.
Originally developed at the National Theatre Studio, this production sees a cast of Deaf and hearing actors bring Fingersmiths’ visual and physical theatre style to the stage, in the first major production of Frozen in over a decade.
One evening, ten year old Rhona goes missing on the way to her grandmother’s house. Her mother, Nancy, retreats into a state of frozen hope. Agnetha, an American criminal psychologist, comes to England to research her thesis ‘Serial Killing: A Forgivable Act?’. Then there’s Ralph, a loner with a bit of previous, who’s looking for some distraction.
Drawn together, the lives of these three characters slowly intersect as they embark upon a long dark journey, through remorse and forgiveness, finally ascending into the light.
With each character being performed by two actors, the story has double the impact, allowing the range of emotions in the play to be presented in different ways, as the characters work together to tell their stories.
Bryony Lavery’s play Frozen was commissioned by and first performed at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1998. It won the TMA Best New Play Award and the Eileen Anderson Central Television Award and was subsequently produced on Broadway in 2004 where it was nominated for four Tony awards.
The cast for Frozen includes Jean St Clair, Neil Fox-Roberts, Deepa Shastri, Hazel Maycock, Mike Hugo, Sophie Stone and appearing on film David Ellington, Tyrone Huggins.
Fingersmiths are Jean St Clair and Jeni Draper. Their combined passion is to push the boundaries of how BSL and spoken or written English are presented on stage. With a multi-layered approach to language and physical expression Fingersmiths style has been described as HD theatre.
Jean St Clair is a founder member of Fingersmiths, whose extensive career has seen her perform nationally and internationally on stage and TV and in the West End, playing the lead in Children of a Lesser God. Alongside co-founder Jeni Draper and Kaite O’Reilly she co-devised In Praise of Fallen Women. Recent films include Still Here directed by Louis Neethling, for which she was awarded Best Actress at Festival Clin d’Oeil 2013.
Jeni Draper is a founder member of Fingersmiths, a director and actress whose directing credits include Merry Wives of Waltham and War Crimes for the Home (Rose & Crown Theatre Pub) and Don’t Leave Me Now (New End Theatre Beyond).
Bryony Lavery’s recent work includes Kursk with Sound and Fury, Last Easter for The REP, Cesario for the National Theatre, Stockholm (winner of the 2008 Whiting Award) and Thursday for Brink/ETT at the Adelaide Festival. Her latest play, The Believers, opens at Theatre Royal Plymouth in February.
Frozen is designed by Jo Paul, with lighting design by Ian Scott, sound design by Becky Smith and video design by Benjamin D. Cooper.
