ICECREAM
In Caryl Churchill’s play Icecream, now being produced jointly by the Inn Town Players and Element Theatre Company, many themes are kicked about (including Churchill’s favorites, sex and violence). But the primary theme is the differences between the Americans and the British and the shattering of those myths. The title is a reference to a word that is written the same in both countries but pronounced differently: Americans say ice cream, while the English say ice cream. This difference in pronunciation, though minor, is indicative of the much larger differences between the two cultures.
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To compound the problem, director Lizabeth Sipes seems to want the Americans to be the good guys. Her English siblings are amoral, punk degenerates, bored by everything and bringing disaster and violence upon themselves with as much nonchalance as Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. The Americans are boorish in their own right, but compared to the British hoodlums, they’re class exemplified.
