FringeNYC 2013: Freefall Frostbite

Review by Martin Denton · August 9, 2013

Michael Fixel's new play Freefall Frostbite is an allegorical verse drama performed in song and movement. The music is composed by Fixel and Marc Irwin and ranges from lyrical introspection to recitative to (very occasionally) up-tempo Broadway. The movement is by director/choreographer Juliet Fixel and covers similar ground, giving the show's very large cast (20 performers including Fixel herself in a leading role) quite a workout. I admire the ambition of all involved and found myself struck my many individual moments within the piece. I never got lost in it, though; and I don't think that I fully "get" what the Fixels and their collaborators are hoping to say here. Your experience of Frostbite will likely be based on how much you appreciate abstract dance and meta-theater.

It's possible, too, that personal knowledge of Michael Fixel's earlier play Salamander Stew, which appeared in FringeNYC 2011, would be beneficial to the viewer as well. That show was reviewed by nytheatre.com's Will Fulton and "tells the story of Steven's brief but passionate affair with Susan, and the subsequent emotional fallout." Steven is the main character in Freefall Frostbite, as well. Here we meet him on New Year's Eve, standing on a line behind a velvet rope waiting to get into an exclusive venue whose name, indicated in big letters on the large doorframe that is one of the show's only set pieces, is "HOME." Steven is accompanied by Sharon, a girlfriend of long-standing with whom he nonetheless shares considerable tension. He says the problem is that he loses himself in his writing. She fears that he is still in love with Susan, who may have only existed in a dream or in Steven's mind (this is where I wished I'd seen Salamander Stew, to learn move about this elusive, possibly phantom, ex-girlfriend).

While Steven and Sharon and a half-dozen others wait rather fruitlessly to be allowed into HOME—whose entryway is guarded by a pair of menacing Doormen—a band of homeless folk sit huddled around a metal trash can in which they've made a fire. The Homeless sometimes try to work their way onto the line and other times beckon the "regular" people to join them by the fire. They race around the space acrobatically, often disappearing into the audience area; their leader reminded me a lot of the Leading Player in Pippin, as he gradually emerges as a sort of god-like figure who is determined to make an honest man of Steven.

A lot of ground gets covered in the piece, which runs about 100 minutes including a brief intermission. There are occasional moments of deliberate fourth-wall breaking and Pirandellian questioning of the playwright (Steven, apparently) by his ostensible characters. There are pointed references to many of the memes and ideas that make our current world feel sick or broken. There are lovely considerations of the creative process and of broken-hearted romance, as experienced by both Sharon and Steven (Susan makes more than one appearance, though whether in "real life" or just in Steven's mind I am not sure). The Doormen and the Homeless feel like representations of religious and/or spiritual guideposts. The music and dance sometimes deepen the themes and sometimes make a raucous counterpoint to them. It's a lot to take in, and I have to admit that by the middle of the second act I started to feel a bit beaten down by it all.

The costumes and set, which are uncredited, are striking and always interesting. Mark Curtis Ferrando, as the pivotal Homeless 1, who becomes our guide into the play's mystical world, has great presence on stage and sings, dances, and acts with aplomb throughout.

Freefall Frostbite is the kind of the show you'd probably only see at a festival like FringeNYC, where a work of this scope and size can be realized on a relatively modest budget and mounted in a suitably welcoming space like La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theater, and where a curious and questing audience in search of something unusual and artistically stimulating will be able to find it.