A True Story from 1961
In this year of the bizarre ice skating competition at the Winter Olympics, Flash/Frozen arrives Off-Off Broadway to tell a story I did not know. A fatal plane crash in 1961 killed the entire U.S. skating team on its way to the World Championships in Prague.
Tim Brown was a four time silver medalist at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and also won two silvers at World’s. In 1961 he won the bronze and qualified for the Olympic team. He did not travel due to illness and the fourth place finisher, Doug Ramsay, boarded that fateful plane.
Lance Ringel has dramatized this tragic event through these two people. Tim was the experienced veteran who never beat his nemesis David Jenkins, the 1960 Olympic gold medalist and a four time champ at nationals. His bitterness is tongue-in-cheek bitchy and entertaining.
Sixteen year old Doug was the up and coming star. He was famous for being an audience favorite. In our modern era of Nathan Chen’s multiple quadruple jump performances, this teenager wowed with the triple jump. He was the only skater at the 1961 U.S. competition to perform one.
The play has a pseudo-documentary structure. A film of JFK’s inauguration on January 20, 1961 opens the show. We hear him say that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. The play starts on that date and concludes less than a month later. In that time both men tell their stories and share their dreams.
Clint Hromsco portrays Tim Brown, always the second banana. After the crash he tells us the press was “merciless”. He cheated death. The unanswerable question: “how do you get over something like that?” His performance nicely straddles the line between unlikable and likable so he is an absorbing character.
Riley Fisher engagingly conjures up the twinkle eye sparkling newness of youth as Doug Ramsay. There is a nice contrast written into this plot contrasting the established veteran against the future star. We see it in sports all the time and it works well here.
The play could be enhanced with a third role. The voiceover narration attempts to set the action and propel the dates forward. An observer looking back at this catastrophe might add an additional level of analysis to what is essentially back and forth monologues.
The concept of “compulsory figures” is an important part of this story. Way back when, these circular patterns counted for as much as sixty percent of the total score. You can understand why the young jumper is bummed he placed fourth due to a disappointing result in this area. I attended the show with someone born after ice skating dropped this element. A narrator could also help fill in the blanks as we did after the play ended.
Wyatt Stone’s figure skating choreography is cutely clever and additive to the tale. Flash/Frozen reminds us that chance is a part of life. Mr. Ringel’s play easily could have been depressing but instead manages to keep the spirit of these athletes alive. This hour long piece could further grow by adding additional spins but the story and the telling were both interesting and a tad heartbreaking.
Flash/Frozen is being performed at Theatre Row through March 20, 2022.