Feeling the heat in 'The Ice-Breaker'
Global warming provides the backdrop for a play about a friendship between two climate scientists that transforms into something more.
By PAUL HODGINS
The Orange County Register
Nobody in Hollywood was more pleased about the recent United Nations report on global warming than David Rambo. The "CSI" screenwriter has long been interested in the subject – so interested that he wrote a play that uses it as a backdrop and thematic device for a story about a May-December romance. "The Ice-Breaker" opens this weekend at the Laguna Playhouse. The UN report confirmed Rambo's beliefs – and made his play's Laguna opening seem all the more timely.
Rambo's interest in global warming started with an article he read several years ago in The New Yorker magazine.
"It was by a terrific reporter named Elizabeth Kolbert," Rambo said. "It was the first piece she wrote about the subject; she followed it with two more, then went on to write a book.
"What struck me about her article is that I had no idea there'd been cycles of glaciation, followed by periods of warming, going on for a very long time. Only during the last 10,000 years, one of the warm periods, did everything that we think of as culture evolve.
"Kolbert talks about going back through past ice ages by analyzing an ice sheet. I thought that was a terrific metaphor for examining the relationship between two people."
"The Ice-Breaker's" two characters are both scientists. Sonia Milan has just written her doctoral thesis on climate change. While on a research trip to Greenland's ice cap, she discovers a lost journal, written a generation earlier by another climate researcher named Dr. Lawrence Blanchard – a paleontologist whose work had long been Sonia's inspiration.
Lawrence has mysteriously disappeared from the world of scientific research. Sonia finds him living a hermitlike existence in the southwestern American desert. Their encounter sets in motion a transformation for both scientists and revelations about each character's past – secrets that have long been buried like the evidence they look for in layer upon layer of ancient ice.
Sonia is a composite of scientists he has met, Rambo said. "She's not based on somebody specific, although there are a bunch of people whose stories parallel hers. I was looking to create someone (who has) a determination that's needed to buck the establishment. When you have an idea that's somehow threatening, you need to be strong."
Lawrence is more of a cipher. Holed up in the scorching desert, he's studying the Anasazi, a native people who mysteriously disappeared centuries ago. "Basically, he's discovered that not everything can be explained," Rambo said. "And he's someone who prefers looking into the past and turning away from the future. He's looking for peace; she's looking for passion."
As good as Gore
Lawrence's stoic exterior conceals layer upon layer of old injuries and defenses, says Laguna Playhouse artistic director Andrew Barnicle, who plays the older scientist.
"He made some big discoveries in the ice. When he released (the information) nobody believed it. He had an emotional breakdown, which they used as an excuse to say his science wasn't sound." Lawrence has lived an isolated existence ever since, shunning society and abandoning his old area of research.
Science figures prominently in "The Ice-Breaker's" plot, Barnicle said. He laughed. "I'm now the world's second-leading expert on global warming, right behind Al Gore." But the science doesn't get too complicated. Barnicle compared the story's egghead quotient to the Tony-winning play "Proof," about troubled mathematics geniuses. "Basically, you don't have to be a scientist to understand what's going on."
Rambo is a busy playwright. His script "God's Man in Texas" was frequently performed around the country in 2002-03, and he writes an adaptation of a different classic film each year as a benefit for The Actors Fund of America. The play is read by a star-studded Hollywood cast; this year he's tackling "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."
But Rambo's bread and butter is his TV work – a relatively recent career development that he owes to "The Ice-Breaker." In an early reading shortly after he finished the first draft in 2002, the "CSI" writing scouts gave Rambo a call – they were impressed by his blend of complex science and character-driven story. Shortly thereafter he was hired by CBS to write for the series full-time. But success in TV came at the expense of his playwriting career: "The Ice-Breaker" wasn't given its first performance until March 2006 at San Francisco's Magic Theatre.
"It's been a long journey," Rambo said of his play's tortuous creation. Since he was gobbled up by Hollywood, Rambo's playwriting is now confined to breaks between seasons. "I get a month off from 'CSI' in May. I always use that month to write (plays). It's a real juggling act. I also grab whatever free time I can."
What's the secret to balancing two writing careers? Rambo laughed. "I don't watch a lot of TV."
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