Same time, next year at The Old Fire Station, Oxford

Glacier
at the Old Fire Station, Oxford
until December 23
Review by JON LEWIS

Alison Spittle’s involving three-hander Glacier, directed by Madelaine Moore, this year’s festive offering for adults at the Old Fire Station, follows three women over many years who meet on Christmas Day for a swim in a freezing lake.

It’s a buddy story where the characters, and the audience, learn about the lives and problems of each woman slowly, the conversations continuing after a year’s gap, strangers developing into friends.

The passing of time is signified by a compilation of news stories played over the speakers, with the trio’s first Christmas together happening in 2007, the year Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as Prime Minister.

A young mother, Lucy (Emma Lau), arrives in a maelstrom of anger, throwing her wedding ring towards the wooden jetty (designer, Cory Shipp) by the lake, hitting the much older, reclusive Dawn (Debra Baker) on the head. The third point in the friendship triangle, Jools (Sophie Steer), is an energetic swimmer who works for a protein shakes company, robustly pregnant, getting changed into her clothes carefully over her bump.

The main drama in the 35 minutes before the interval revolves around Lucy’s annoyance with Dawn over lost Lucy’s ring, an heirloom in her husband’s family. Whilst there’s a friction between Lucy ‘the screaming woman’ and Dawn that lasts several years, Lucy and Jools bond over their young children, meeting each other outside the annual rendezvous at the lake. In the hour after the interval, time bends forward to the present day, each year revealing more of the personal lives of the women. Much of the action sees the actors changing out of, and into, their clothes after swimming in the lake, chairs on rollers used effectively for the swimming strokes.

Recent pandemic experiences are reflected in the comic confusions over wearing masks outdoors and the legality of meeting friends outside their official bubbles.

There’s a well-intentioned plug for the Old Fire Station’s partners Crisis, when the women organise a mass swim on Christmas Day as a fundraiser for the charity.

The final scene’s sadness, strongly forecasted earlier in the play, might cause a tear to fall.