Review: The Relentless Pursuit of Ice by Punchkin Repertory Theatre
by Michael Meigs

In theatre world, a space bounded only by the imagination, the playwright and company can take us almost anywhere.  The battlements at Elsinore; Osage County; the humble Loman household; or eerie reaches that seem beyond space and time.  Samuel Beckett did it best, at least for me when I was reading in, a long time ago.  Vladimir and Estragon, Hamm and Clov in Endgame, Krapp and his last tape.

Nowadays apocalypses are as common as dirt, at least in Hollywood's relentless belching of computer generated effects.  But when you make the deal within the theatre, you'll accept worlds, galaxies, universes of illogic, provided there's a core of truth or learning or humanity in the action.

That's what Austin playwright Max Langert, director Kyle Zamchek and rest of the Punchkin Rep people provide with this production.  They situate us in a desolate future -- check; they give us a globe warmed beyond ordinary endurance -- check; they give us an isolated couple, Liz and Tom, who yearn for nothing so much as the electric touch of ice to soothe their defeated bodies.  The heat's so intense beyond that door at center stage that it must be threatening to melt the hair off your skull, and yet Tom ventures out again and again in search of ice.

In a wasteland without electricity and no nearby neighbors.  How can they even know of the existence of ice?  It's a useless effort, and we at first can only guess at their irrational behavior.

There's a knock on the door and the shout 'Delivery!'  Someone has left a smooth black rectangular object.  We in the audience recognize it immediately, of course, as a netbook, but Liz and Tom are so distanced from the former civilization -- ours -- that they have no idea how to handle it.

Once we've accepted those rules in this irrational world, Langert is free to play with us as he wishes.  Liz and Tom clumsily get the thing to respond, to flash messages up on the screen and by accident they discover that they can respond by pushing those buttons with the letters on them.  (How did these deprived and isolated individuals even learn to read? Their suddenly blossoming ability to tap messages via the keyboard puts paid to those speculations about the infinite number of monkeys on typewriters.)  Liz (Candice Carr) is enchanted; Tom (Adam Foldes) is baffled, annoyed and impatient. He withdraws to their bedroom behind the screen upstage.

Enter Frankie, a mystery presence.  First in the form of screen messages, which the playwright obligingly allows us to hear; subsequently as a teasing purveyor of images who coaxes Liz into providing selfies.  Eventually the insistent Frankie enters their dwelling, first as an unseen presence, later as a physical apparition who may not really be there.  When he does turn up in person, he wears a grotesque mask and rattles a metal cup.

With ice in it.

What would you do for it?  Frankie's the great tempter and the great seducer, plying his art first on one and then the other.  Corporal or disembodied, he's the snake in the garden of Eden or maybe the devil in the desert.  Or perhaps simply an element in the eternal triangle, slithering his way into a stable but unhappy situation and manipulating it. Jonathan Itchon has a good time with the role, and you can almost see the smirk that hides behind that all-obscuring helmet of his.

Their world is weird and illogical but the strains on the human heart are immediately recognizable, and we're intent on discovering what's to become of these two.  Carr and Foldes play these events with utter sincerity, and we believe them.

Punchkin Rep reads the play in part as an examination of the insidious nature of technology.  In this world, except for Frankie's gleaming artefacts only bits of junk remain.  By turns Liz and Tom crave and hide from one another Frankie's tempting toys: first the netbook, then a camera that plugs into it, then a portable telephone.

Prepping us for that theme, before opening the house the company invited waiting audience members to download an app and play pre-show music on their portable devices.  The trick worked more or less, but the feed ceased once the action on stage began.  The company provided its own music at intermission, including the Talking Heads' Psycho Killer.

The hot cider and hot chocolate available during the pause were very well received.  We were in search of warmth.

It was curious to contemplate searing heat and the search for ice as we huddled there in our jackets in the only partially heated Museum of Human Achievement, a former warehouse in the miscellaneous collection of buildings close to the former Blue Theatre.  The company had been forced to cancel the first performance of The Relentless Pursuit of Ice -- because of the sudden spate of freezing weather.  They've scheduled a make-up performance on Saturday afternoon, February 1.

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The Relentless Pursuit of Ice
by Max Langert
Punchkin Repertory Theatre

Fri 1/24 @ 8pm
Satu 1/25 @ 8pm
Fri 1/31 @ 8pm
Sat 2/1 @ 8pm

The Relentless Pursuit of Ice by Max Langert is staged four times as part of the FronteraFest. Bring Your Own Venue (January 25, 31 and twice on February 1 -- tickets here).