I love looking at photographs. One of my favourite images is not even my own memory but an old photograph I found in a book from a charity shop. It shows a group of British soldiers from World War Two posing under a tree. I do not know their names. But I know their faces. I often imagine who they are, how they fought, and how they lived. It was this kind of emotional connection, of curiosity that I hoped the production would create. I was wrong. Frozen Stills is a fabricated yarn about a man called Walter, and not a good one at that.The main obstacle is the way it which it has been staged. The performers presented clichéd caricatures, which lacked conviction. Not only that but the Frozen Stills doesn’t just focus on Walter, it serves as a wiki-lecture on photography, with actors breaking from the character to address the audience about what photography is to them. There was no emotional connection in what they say, as they stumble over overwrought dialogue, so ironically, it came across as insincere. This insincerity continued as they staged taking pictures of the audience. The objective is to create an emotional memory, a ‘frozen still’ of the cast with the audience. These moments lose all emotional impact as it was quite obvious that no such picture is taken. There is no flash. No click. The camera is merely a prop.There are moments in the staging that show creative flair, but they are not enough to save the production. Scenes when the actors animate Walter’s memories by becoming the people in his photographs show promise but can be developed further.Unfortunately Frozen Stills is not one for the photo album.
