New Rep’s production of The Ice-Breaker was part of a National New Play Network “rolling world premiere,” in conjunction with productions at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre and Indianapolis’s Phoenix Theatre. Written by David Rambo – known nationally for his writing on the hit television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation – The Ice-Breaker depicts the developing relationship between two scientists. Sonia, a brilliant academic completing her thesis on climatology, arrives on the desert of the American Southwest in search of Lawrence, a once-legendary scientist (now living in self-imposed exile), whose research on polar ice inspired Sonia’s work. When the two meet, sexual and intellectual sparks fly, but in the course of one sleepless night, both learn that their romantic attraction is as volatile and mysterious as the potential climate change they fear.
The set design brought forth the visual theme of inseparable and contradictory opposites that resonate throughout the tensions of the play, through use of complementary colors, contrasting densities of settings, and compositional polarity.
"2006 Nominee for Best Set Design," Independent Reviewers of New England, IRNE, Boston, MA
Realization
“The production values for the show are spectacular... mapping out atmosphere where outside nature seems to always influence interior worlds.”