Every now and then a production turns up that makes us realise how much we take basic theatre skills for granted in Wellington. My ‘when in doubt consider the title’ strategy doesn’t help with Stay Frosty. I have no idea what the title signifies from watching the play. (Later, Urban Dictionary tells me it is “a valediction which has come to mean ‘be cool’, but which more properly understood is an admonishment to stay alert and on one’s toes.”  

The publicity suggests it’s a thriller involving two incompetent part-time crims and a botched heist. Anticipating flawed characters whose all-too-human failings produce either broad comedy or an ever-intensifying drama (like Al Pacinos’ breakthrough film Dog Day Afternoon), I arrive feeling warmly disposed to this first play by James Atkinson.

Atkinson also plays his central character, Pelly, an English pub quiz writer who wants a better life, especially when he gets into a relationship with Brooke (Elle Wooton), who seems to equate love with the provision of material wealth. Their opening scene is intriguing and engaging despite, or rather because of, her tantalising game-playing and his insular introversion. Where will they go from here?

Leap to one year later and we’re in an old people’s home where English Jerry (Bill Robinson) is being visited by American Mac (George Klingbeil) in an old people’s home, under the eye of Nurse K (director Suzy Cain replacing the original actor). There is clearly something dodgy about these guys. And Mac has a clearly visible handgun tucked into his belt, which no-one comments on, not even the nurse. So different questions begin to arise …

A scene between Mac and Pelly brings the two scenarios together. There is a murky back-story that materially affects the status of one over the other. And back at what is now the home of Pelly and Brooke, where Pelly and his ‘partner in wannabe crime’ Hendrick (Alexander Garside) meet to plan the heist, Brooke eventually turns out to have a moral compass the others lack.

Given Elle Wooton inhabits her role fully and so draws us into her dilemma, I am left wondering if all the other roles are under-written or whether it is the actors who are responsible for their being two-dimensional and unconvincing.

But what lets the production down most is the total lack of dramatic tension. The heist scene is laughable for all the wrong reasons. Likewise the Retirement Home Scene where Pelly and Hendrick come to get Jerry.

The circumstances are there in the premise and the structure to produce a good play. There are quite a few good lines of dialogue – but it is as if most of the cast and their director think their primary job is to deliver the dialogue and not bump into the furniture. Apart from Wooton, and sometimes Atkinson, they look and sound like actors acting.

Projecting interior location slides on to the backdrop, high enough not to catch shadows and therefore too high to blend into the scene, is a fairly lazy design solution for a multi-scene play. Even so, the flow of the story is impeded by shifting furniture in the semi-gloom; and exercise which could well have been minimised and speeded up with the sort of creative ingenuity we’ve come to take for granted (check out Pupil Zero, for example).

To write it off as hum-drum am-dram would be unfair to many excellent amateur groups. It is reviewed here because it is part of the Fringe and competing with umpteen other shows for your time, attention and money. An opening night audience of friends whooped and applauded, as is the standard, it has to be said, but Stay Frosty just left me cold. 

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