Whatever there is to say about The Ice Child (and there’s a fair amount to say), no one can claim the play is spinning its wheels. To realize the tale of a girl captured and imprisoned in a basement freezer by her psychopath professor, the creative team has brought out as many bells and whistles as it can fit inside the rather small Mead Theatre Lab.
Conceptually the work is fascinating, a minimalistic hybrid of film and performance art. A large digital screen, broadcasting artfully photographed sequences on loop, rests in the middle of a stark white boxy construction that looks like it was lifted from the “modern” section of the American Art Gallery down the street. The actors emerge from behind the screen and project their lines from pedestals on either side (speaking into microphone stands, creating a slam-poetry vibe). They never face each other. There are no props, and not much in the way of stage direction. Ominous synths moan in the background.
This overly conscious effort to stand out makes sense when you consider how much the people behind The Ice Child have riding on the production: The play is the first original work put on by the three-year-old Factory 449, which last year won the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company. New companies, especially award-winning new companies, have an atmosphere like a pressurized chamber — or like that freezer the protagonist is trapped in. There’s only so much momentum in this box, and you have to keep innovating under scrutiny or you’ll suffocate and your muscles will freeze.
So is this approach an organic one that complements the story, or was it conceived out of oxygen-deprived desperation? The good news is that director Hunter Styles, a contributor to DC Theatre Scene, makes you believe it’s the former. When Sara Barker first steps onto the stage as the luckless Catherine, we see frost-tipped video footage of her predicament, and the effect is (terrible pun alert) chilling.
Despite the necessary limitations that have been placed on Barker, as well as those of the other three cast members (they’re essentially doing voiceovers), all of them turn in admirably unsettling work. Dexter Hamlett as the captor Kidd is a standout, though this seems by design — he has the most time on stage.
The inspirations for The Ice Child would be easy to pinpoint even if the press materials didn’t outline them. Factory 449 drew guidance from the writings of Ambrose Bierce and Edgar Allen Poe, and the play’s structure (bad things happen in enclosed spaces) mimics one of those authors’ seminal short stories. There’s also more than a bit of 21st-century “torture porn” vulgarity: We’re treated to detailed descriptions of both Catherine’s piss and Kidd’s depraved sexual desires.
But unlike the works of Bierce and Poe, who knew how to write with gripping, twisty throughlines, The Ice Child plods and muddles early and often. The unorthodox structure isn’t the problem – it’s the dialogue, which feels undercooked despite the play’s three credited writers (Styles and Factory 449 cohorts Lisa Hodsoll and Rick Hammerly). Characters, particularly Kidd, go long stretches barely acknowledging there’s a girl locked in the basement. They sneer, scream, pontificate and recite nursery rhymes at each other, in detours that are at first irritating, then disengaging.
We further lose sight of the big picture when the play detours into issues of infidelity, as Kidd’s wife (Karin Rosnizeck) takes up an affair with the young Wilson (David Landstrom), who is … actually, who is this guy? Is he another student of Kidd’s? Just a friend? Someone else? Why does Kidd tell him there are bugs under his skin? If there was an explanation for his character, it flitted by in disguise and left none the wiser.
Yet for all this lack of focus (in a one-hour play!), the biggest concern is the manner in which the production treats the very person whose life is at stake. For much of the play Catherine feels like the superfluous one, the fourth wheel, a mere device with which to explore everyone else’s problems. We learn a few key details about her which aren’t worth spoiling, but nothing crucial to the story ever protrudes from her own lips.
Catherine is left in the dark, in every sense — all decisions are made around her, and the writers paint her crisis (which, beyond a few meek pleas, she makes no attempt to escape from) as a backdrop to Kidd’s personal demons. This feels patently unfair, and seems the wrong sort of direction for Factory 449, especially considering all the thought and care that went into the overall presentation. Why cheapen such a horrific predicament by telling the girl locked in the freezer she’s the least essential part of her own story?
There is no arc to Catherine. She does not grow; she has no realization; she has no means to fight back. She sits around and waits for the end. After a while, so do we. The clock’s ticking, and the air in this box is thinning.
The Ice Child is onstage thru June 3, 2012 at the Mead Theatre Lab, Flashpoint Gallery, 916 G Street NW Washington, DC
Details
Tickets
The Ice Child
Written by Lisa Hodsoll, Rick Hammerly and Hunter Styles
Directed by Hunter Styles
Produced by Factory 449
Reviewed by Andrew Lapin
Not recommended
Running time: 1 hour, no intermission.
Other reviews- Celia Wren . Washington Post
Erica Laxson . DCMetroTheaterArts
It may not be criminal but it’s still shameful, for a theater company attempting to bill itself as “experimental.” Experimental theater is an arena where new ideas are intended to be worked over, analyzed, synthesized – not copied wholesale from other companies in other cities, thinking nobody will take notice. It’s a much different animal from community/regional theater directors ripping off the staging/design of this or that Broadway musical that everybody’s heard of – in that situation, everyone understands and even expects some consistency between the original, iconic production and their local remount. But in this case, few theatergoers in DC would know Temporary Distortion’s work well enough to recognize Factory 449?s original “inspiration” – and their billing as an “experimental theater company” would imply that the work has been developed by the company as an original piece. Not so, it seems.
The debate continues @ http://ethicsalarms.com/2012/06/15/the-ice-child-and-staging-theft-ethics/
The debate continues here on Culturebot’s website –
http://www.culturebot.net/2012/06/13733/was-temporary-distortions-designs-and-concepts-stolen-by-another-company/
Article from Culturebot
http://www.culturebot.net/2012/06/13733/was-temporary-distortions-designs-and-concepts-stolen-by-another-company/
Da Muse,
This was not a homage. It was an act of theft.
When the creators of The Ice Child were interviewed by The Washington Post about their upcoming show, Jessica Goldstein reported:
“The show uses video and has no traditional blocking, said Hodsoll. “The actors are talking to each other, but they’re never actually facing each other,” she explained. “It speaks to the distance and alienation between people.””
While it could be interpreted that this staging perhaps does speak to the distance and alienation between people, there was also the chance here for The Ice Child team to say that these choices were lifted directly from Americana Kamikaze (as well as a history of other works by Temporary Distortion). Instead, the creators of The Ice Child decided to try to justify these choices with their own personal philosophy… passing them off as choices they made or ideas they came up with on their own.
This seems one of many clear examples of Factory 449’s intent to deceive the press and the audience into thinking these choices were original.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/performing-arts/the-ice-child,1229570/critic-review.html
Having seen and enjoyed 3 shows by the nationally renowned Temporary Distortion over the years, I was startled to see this obvious and outright plagiarism of their well-known production style by a D.C. company. As a director myself, I can’t imagine that the director of Ice Child couldn’t find a more original way to express his ideas. It’s embarrassing, it’s gross, it’s cheap, and it’s basically an artistic lie.
Time and time again, we’ve heard about people just happening to pull things out of the ether that look and function exactly like other artist’s work, when the truth is that it’s just straight up lack of creativity and self-esteem. Unless… it’s an homage?
Just saw William Cusick post this:
The Ice Child
It looks like Factory 449 is remounting Temporary Distortion’s production Americana Kamikaze in Washington DC, only under a different name and without giving us any credit for the design and style of the show. I was just emailed this link to a review and found myself utterly speechless. Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, right? I hope they win an award for the show and thank us in their acceptance speech.
http://www.williamcusick.com/?p=309
Factory 449 has now admitted to taking all of these ideas directly from Temporary Distortion’s Americana Kamikaze without seeking permission from the NYC-based company.
If you don’t believe that, ask Factory 449 where they got their ideas for this show.
Time and time again, we’ve heard about people claiming “plagiarism” when the truth is that it’s just someone else who happened to have the same, or a similar, idea. It often happens with books and movies. For example, multiple people are suing over the claim that only they could have come up with the idea of a child who has a secret life as a rockstar, and Hannah Montana stole their idea. But actual copyright infringement or plagiarism (two different things) require some actual copying — not just people having the same idea. Given that, it’s not entirely clear what’s going on with the claim (found via Michael Scott) that the ex-wife of the singer Usher, Tamika Foster, may have “plagiarized” a self-published author when she wrote a blog post for the Huffington Post called “She’s Pretty for a Dark-Skinned Girl…” The author claiming plagiarism had written a book, similarly titled “Pretty for a Black Girl.” cut and pasted from http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090827/1951026028.shtml
How can this company so blatantly plagiarize in form, style and content another work is beyond me.
Temporary Distortion, in 2009, created “Americana Kamikaze”:
http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/theater/reviews/27americana.html
http://temporarydistortion.com/productions/americana-kamikaze/
The almost exact similarities between the original, and this not very original version, cannot under any circumstances be a coincidence. It is a shame to see this happen.
It is really striking how much the photo and description of the style of this show looks exactly Temporary Distortion’s AMERICANA KAMIKAZE from 2009.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/theater/reviews/27americana.html
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Unfortunately, no, the review is not “true”. Truth is not subjective. The review is. Please try to understand the difference.
I saw this production. In what universe does the reviewer live in where you hear and see every single subtext and context a character may be thinking/saying in a play, or real life for that matter?? To compare the two is either immature or wishful thinking. If the reviewer wants to review short stories, might I suggest a different venue? Moreover, the production, avant-garde and edgy, gave the audience a modern vision, IN A DRAMATIC millieu, of what that story might look like portrayed on the stage. I felt claustrophobic and emotionally engaged. I believe thats the goal of any production. This show is an IMPORTANT step for this company: to self produce, direct, write, and stage a piece of modern theater in which the audience is made to feel what the characters are feeling, NOT thinking every moment. And it suceeds. Leave it to a DC theater pub to wax rhapsodic about something like The Music Man, and of course loathe and tear down one of its own (best and brightest). THATS the truth.
This comment is ridiculous.
Andrew’s review is true, concise and deserved.
He makes good points and is objective throughout.
Get off your high horse, please.
This is one of the most incongruous, and, frankly, unfair reviews that I have come across in a while. It is as if Mr. Lapin and I watched two entirely different plays.
First, there is an issue with the horizon of expectations. Surely, Mr. Lapin understood before he set foot in the Mead Theatre Lab that he was not going to see “The Phantom of the Opera” or “Shear Madness.” The entire raison d’être of Factory 449 is produce avant garde theater that provokes, unsettles and challenges the audience. This is exactly what “The Ice Child” delivered: an unsettling horror story, full of psychological complexity, bravura acting and visually stunning multi-media images. Neither the plot narrative, characters nor dialogue was perfect–but that was the whole point–a form of Brecht’s alienation effect. Audiences are forced to engage, to imaginatively fill in the blanks and draw their own connections and conclusions. This goal–that the play and the company set themselves–was successfully fulfilled.
I think it is unfair for Mr. Lapin to impose his own expectations and goals onto the production and then–unsurprisingly–find them lacking. Moreover, some of his specific criticisms seem misplaced. He laments that there was not more development of the Catherine character, implying that the narrative centered on her–which is well off the mark. The backstory and motivation of the youthful Wilson is similarly ambiguous–but we are given enough to creatively construct plausible circumstances and motivations.
I also do not understand the editorializing about the award-winning (deservedly so) company having a lot riding on this particular production and having to maintain momentum. What theater company in the history of the world does not have a lot riding on each and every production? Who can afford not to have momentum? Mr. Lapin should save such questions for an interview with one of the principals and not for a review of a production. Of course, strategically he inserts these opinions as part of his effort to delegitimize the play.
Finally, the review is actually full of many positive things and contains, in my opinion, several mere quibbles about plot, dialogue and character development. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the summary judgment is “not recommended.”
I find Mr. Lapin’s review especially disappointing from DC Theater Scene. The transgressive and challenging material that Factory 449 produces is still rare in Washington. The fact that highly creative “theater-as-art” is finally finding a foothold here is something that should be appreciated and encouraged and not so flippantly and summarily dismissed.