The influence of nature versus nurture, the difference between forgiveness and forgetting, the existence of good and evil: these paradoxes were invoked by a cast of three actors against a spare backdrop in Monday night’s Island opening of Bryony Lavery’s Tony award-nominated drama Frozen. The story involves a grieving mother, a psychiatrist, and the murdered child who connects them.

“You’re really thrown into an area of ultimate questions. Because any play that’s worth its salt is going to be asking questions,” said director Raymond Munro in an interview Tuesday. “We look at the voices [in the play]; they’re a wonderful illustration of ... the voices we’re contending with in contemporary society.”

The provocative play explores the plight of a man with an abusive childhood whose psychological wounds materialize into hatred towards women, the victimization of children, and a complete lack of personal responsibility.

The psychiatrist and the mother characters provide a sharp contrast, inviting the audience to explore both sides of a complex scenario. “You have the rational [and] scientific versus the traditional [and] religious, and the standoff that that creates,” said Mr. Munro. The story unfolds over two and a half hours, a montage of moments that spans 20 years, illustrating the aftermath of a child’s abduction and murder. An additional layer is introduced in the final scene of the play, bringing the story full circle by bringing the quandary to a more relatable level.

“What happens in a world where there is no evil, where you can’t call anything evil?” said Mr. Munro, providing a rhetorical question prompted by the drama. “But if you [do] call it evil, can you really forgive it? [And if you do] are you somehow complicit?”

His own questions demonstrate his personal philosophy about theatre and the arts in general. “[It is] what feeds the sort of moral consciousness that we need. Not necessarily answering questions but just contending with the questions.”

Of Frozen in particular: “A piece like this does, I think, feed that consciousness, and it nurtures it.”

His philosophy was the basis for Foxrock Performance Company, which Mr. Munro established in 2001 with a small core group of actors. “We try to do things that have . . . a spiritual dimension to them,” he said of the company.

First focused on acting, he took an interest in directing during his undergraduate years in college. He used a metaphor to explain his switch to a behind-the-scenes role in the performing arts: “I just started walking the wrong way down the street, [and] they just had to pull me back.”

Mr. Munroe currently works as a Professor of Theater Arts at Clark University in central Massachusetts, commuting back and forth from his home in Edgartown. He has been teaching at Clark since 1979, and though he keeps a small residence nearby, he considers the Vineyard his home base.

“It’s our home,” he said, including his wife, Virginia Penta, who works at the Edgartown library and also stars as Nancy, the mother character in Frozen.

He described the ways in which Island life is conducive to creating art. “We’re an Island . . . it’s a whole way of life and approach. We live here because you feel like you have a shot here. You feel like you could make something good . . . [There is] generally just a higher level of consciousness here. But that needs to be fed, and the best way to feed that, of course, is the arts.”

Foxrock has staged performances in theatre venues from Boston to Dublin to Krakow, Poland. Last year, the company spent three months preparing Frozen for a month-long performance run in Worcester. Family responsibilities have prompted a recent hiatus for the company, and the four-night production of Frozen here on the Vineyard represents a reemergence for Foxrock onto the theatre scene.

“We just sort of put it back together,” said Mr. Munro of Frozen. Rich Roode and Terri Deletetsky, who play the characters of Ralph and Agnetha, are Mr. Munro’s former students and regular participants in the company. They arrived on the Island last Thursday to begin preparations for the Monday opening. After the Vineyard run, he hopes to travel with the piece. “We’re just trying to get this in motion,” said Mr. Munro.

The final performance of Frozen is tonight at 8 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven. Tickets are $20, available at the door. For details, visit foxrock.org or call 508-627-6676.