iTheatre Collaborative has once again taken difficult material and made it all too terrifyingly human. This company tends to fall under the radar, and that’s a shame, because their work is often as powerful as Stray Cat and with the strong production values and slyness of Nearly Naked. A good example is their current production, a play by Bryony Lavery entitled Frozen that deals with a British serial child molester/serial killer. This episodic script with unbalanced alternating monologues and dialogues between two of the three characters would be a hard sell anywhere, since empathy and disdain can be equally placed across the three characters. iTC makes it barely bearable with professional direction by Michael Traylor and remarkable performances by Rosemary Close as a visiting American psychiatrist, Shannon Whirry as a proper and distraught mother, and especially Christopher Haines as the central character Ralph, a misunderstood bloke who genuinely doesn’t quite get why it’s wrong to molest and kill young girls.

Lavery’s play is an odd mix of slapstick comedy and gut-wrenching drama. Close’s character, Agnetha, is agonizing over her relationship with her collaborator in a pretty comedic way, while Whirry’s Nancy is a vengeful spirit and Haines’ Ralph is uncomfortably normal beyond the shield of lies and his vile acts. Agnetha is cracking up while trying to present a façade of normalcy. As Close plays her, she is comically splitting between her professional demeanor and her personal torment. This is done in a broader way than the other two, and while it is a strange choice, it still works. Nancy is a cyclone of various emotions, and Whirry is asked to fracture before the audience in a tirade of anger, loss, self-loathing, guilt, and vengeance. It is Ralph, with his lower class pretensions and his matter-of-fact references to terrible things that ironically remains through most of the play the more centered and balanced of the off-balanced trio. Haines’ crackup comes later, but follows the path set by the other two.

Traylor’s direction is smooth and suggestive, allowing for only the barest of set pieces with no props or costume changes. Things are mimed, places barely suggested, and ideas sometimes appear on a screen above and behind the set that is used a little inconsistently, but successfully those times it is. Since the reliance is less on the physical space, it is established strongly through lighting and sound. All action takes place inside a claustrophobic box on the stage indicative of a sheet of ice fracturing at the front. Whirry raises her voice, lives in denial, or flings herself to the floor at various times but never does so in a way that appears overt; these are character choices that work. Close’s crack-ups are broader, less consistent with the feel of the show, but she and Traylor deliver on these character predispositions as the play winds down. In the end, it is Haines who commands the tiny space, each physical and vocal tick (observe the way he says “obviously”), all of his fastidious ways and descriptions, giving us a sympathetic monster, a beast warped by misguided nurturing, and as Agnetha finds the triggers that have made him, he is no longer loathsome, but worthy of empathy…to a point.

There are no surprises about how things move from start to finish. This script does not deviate much from what we expect should and will happen. The drama comes more from sharing the space with these three off-balance creations and watching them come to blows. If the ending seems a little disappointing and pat, consider how you might have felt if given any of the other options available to the playwright and then appreciate the emotionally-wringing ride that brought you to it.