Why I'm a lousy theatre reviewer.

We went to see Frozen at Circuit Playhouse last Saturday. After some of the shows we've caught there, it was nice to see something that I can fully endorse. For those unfamiliar with the story, it's the examination of the relationships and psyches of a serial killer, the researcher examining him, and the mother of one of his victims. The bulk of the play is delivered as a series of alternating monologues, which strikes me as a weak playwriting choice especially when it comes to the serial killer and the mother (the researcher's monologues are delivered in either the form of lectures or in one-sided telephone conversations). We hear a monologue about a scene which could be gut-wrenching or terrifying, but we don't get to witness these events unfold. These choices, coupled with the clinical nature of much of the dialogue when characters finally do interact with one another, keep the audience's emotions largely in check in spite of some really outstanding performances.

And the perfomances are first-rate. Having worked with most of the cast in Fiddler, I can see where putting this show through its paces can be an exhausting piece of work. Perhaps my familiarity with the cast makes the machinery more visible, so that I'm looking at the play from a different level from your ordinary audience member. I guess it's like knowing what goes into hot dogs--the magic becomes a little lost, and the unreality of what I'm seeing on stage is always apparent.

That said, for two seconds in the show the vignette of researcher demonstrating nervous impulses in serial killer, on a stage and with costumes that have most of the color washed out of them (costumes in that scene only), suddenly put me in the mind of the lecture scene in Young Frankenstein, and I smiled inappropriately.