It’s Fred the fridge (Liam Kelly) who greets us first – and it’s his perspective on twenty-somethings dealing with love and loss that elevates Ben Wilson’s play above the humdrum. Despite having been stuck in the same place for twenty-something years, and being cold, as the title declares – especially when his light, placed in the heart spot, fails – Fred is surprisingly upbeat and friendly.

It’s also surprising he’s the feature item in the living area of this abode, as Michael Trigg’s set design has it, but maybe you get that “a small and dingy student flat”, as the media release has is – occupied by only two people.

In a phone chat with her mum, Sasha (Sylvie McCreanor) admits to feeling guilty about feeling jealous at the snapchat pix a friend is posting of her travels. It turns out she is awaiting news of a possible scholarship to Melbourne. I think it’s architecture she’s studying but nothing in the play’s present action suggests this is her passion.  

When Josh (Keegan Bragg) returns from his mother’s funeral, he consults a talking app on his cellphone about the stages of grief, which generates some witty banter but no answers. Technology, then, has its limits – unless you suddenly find empathy emanating from the fridge. It’s surprising for Josh if not for Fred.

At this point a dance break – involving Bragg and McCreanor but I’m not sure if they’re being Josh and Sasha here – seems dedicated to demonstrating the physical limits constraining Fred and ridiculing him for it. We feel for him but it doesn’t seem to cut deep for him. Things are what they are. Shit happens but he doesn’t make it mean anything; it has no psychological effect – which I guess is the point, to be compared with how Josh and Sasha cope with the slings and arrows coming their way.

The question of Sasha’s scholarship lurks in the background as, frustrated, she harshly judges Josh’s not wanting to talk about his mother as “repressed male Kiwi bullshit.” So Josh bonds with Fred, over Pixar movies and old classics which Fred, being in the living room, has seen many of, albeit at the whim of the annually changing tenants.

It turns out it’s Josh’s 22nd birthday and he and Fred celebrate with Toy Story 3. Bragg and McCreanor manifest brilliantly as Sheriff Woody and cowgirl Jessie, dancing a hoe-down as Fred cuts loose on keys with Randy Newman’s ‘You Got a friend in Me’ … And Josh edges a little closer towards opening up to Fred about his mother’s death, at least to the point of revealing it happened two weeks ago.

Back in ‘the real world’ Sasha wants to take Josh out to celebrate his birthday and he wants to stay in so she goes to get some DVDs …

In another Josh/Fred phase, death is addressed in the mode of an old Vincent Price horror movie where Trigg’s set and lighting design come into their own. Pixel’s prime competitor even makes a posthumous appearance (made possible by his dying wish). I’m not clear whether we are sharing Josh or Fred’s dream here.

We have gleaned there is some kind of enmity between Josh and his brother Elliot (Ben Wilson), based on Elliot’s having left home, and when he turns up en route to wherever he lives, to tell Josh he needs to go and look after their father, it’s clear their mother’s death and the funeral process has done nothing to heal the rift. Nor does it erupt to throw up all the buried issues and emotions.

The question of Sasha’s scholarship does resurface with consequences … not to be revealed here. Suffice to say that set-up pays off while many others do not.

With director Neenah Dekkers-Reihana at the helm, there are a number of memorable production elements and the action never gets bogged down. The actors all bring an intelligent, focused energy to their work.

Nevertheless – as you may have guessed from my attempts to unpack the piece – I’m finding it difficult to locate the heart of Fred is Cold. Is the animation of Fred a function of Josh’s grief, or are the human characters agents in revealing how ‘life’ is for Fred?

While the media release calls it “A comedy about friendship and loneliness, about love and loss,” the programme notes from both writer and director add words like “depression”, “suicidal thoughts” and “mental health”. This puzzles me and perturbs me a little as – Josh developing a friendship with a refrigerator notwithstanding – I find the scenarios involving love and loss and the human reactions to them to be perfectly ‘normal’; totally human responses to life-changing experiences. I don’t identify anything like clinical depression. Nor is there any suggestion that Josh’s interactions with Fred mean he has lost his mind and needs to see a therapist.

Given the media release quotes Fred’s line, “Most people don’t like saying goodbye. In my opinion, it’s a privilege,” my best guess is that Fred’s relatively Zen approach to the long list of losses that have punctuated his life, is there to show up the mess we human’s get ourselves into by adding self-defeating and even self-harming meaning to inevitable aspects of human existence.

Except in the end [spoiler alert] it’s Fred who suddenly wants to end it all. It seems his bonding with Josh, rather than just observing him as yet another temporary occupant of the flat, means this departure is one loss he cannot face. Indeed it has awoken emotions in him that cause him to cry out for people we’ve never heard of before – Daniel and Jean; Rosie and Keith – and to experience a suffering he never knew existed [ends]. Is this, then, the point of the play?

Perhaps. The coda is Josh’s eulogy for his mother, and it’s about all the things he’ll miss that she used to do for him. I find myself wondering if he’s ever realised his mother was a person who lived a whole quarter life – as he has done – before she became a mother. And I have no idea if that’s a valid thought at this point.

Feeling the need to better locate a substantial reality to offset the fantasy, I am also left with other questions:

What exactly is the relationship between Josh and Sasha? They declare love for each other but are they sleeping together or is it platonic, and if so what is their relationship status with others? Is it a want or need? If not, why not?

If his relationship with Sasha is not central to his life, what else is – or was – giving Josh’s life purpose? Is he studying something? Does he have a job to pay his share of the rent? What, then, are the implications of Elliot’s demand that Josh go back to Christchurch?

Who is their father? What is Josh’s relationship with him? And Elliot’s for that matter? What exactly is the issue between Josh and Elliot – why does it matter so much that Elliot left?

Has Josh gained anything from the losses he has experienced or is he indeed in need of counselling?

And now I find myself wondering if Fred’s outburst at the end was a manifestation of Josh’s confronting – and even sending up his own – self-repression by way of a cathartic release. If so, I’d like to get that in the moment of its being played out.

In my review of Ben Wilson’s Call Me Bukowski almost a year ago, I wondered if he had used too many devices to interrogate the eternal “Who am I?” question and concluded: “I would be loath to rein in Ben Wilson’s creative energy this early in what I hope will be a long and productive career.” I still feel that way and trust my observations and questions will prove useful – or will prove I have missed some essential point entirely and may therefore be ignored. 

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