Preview
BLUE SURGE
Ground Zero Theatre
Starring Jennifer Connolly, Sherry Lynn Friesen, Elinor Holt, C. Adam Leigh and David Trimble
Written by Rebecca Gilman
Directed by Glenda Stirling
Runs until February 21
Pumphouse Theatres
Forget good cop, bad cop – think: happy cop, sad cop.
That would be the shorthand way to describe the two boys in blue played by actors C. Adam Leigh and David Trimble in Ground Zero Theatre’s latest show, Blue Surge.
The play, by U.S. playwright Rebecca Gilman (Boy Gets Girl), is about a pair of police detectives, Doug (Leigh) and Curt (Trimble), whose lives are altered when they attempt to bust a massage parlour that’s fronting for a brothel.
For happy-go-lucky Doug, the failed operation has a rosy outcome. He ends up in a relationship with Heather (Sherry Lynn Friesen), one of the prostitutes, who shares his careless, party-hard attitude.
For Curt, however, things are more complicated. Well-meaning, but frustrated by his own lack of achievement and scarred by an impoverished childhood, he sets out to save Sandy (Jennifer Connolly), a 19-year-old just starting out in the sex trade. Only Sandy, also from a poor, screwed-up family, is getting her first taste of big money and personal freedom and doesn’t want to be saved.
Like Curt and Doug, the play itself is a teaming of comedy with pathos, lighter in tone than the stalking thriller Boy Gets Girl – seen earlier this season at Theatre Junction – but once again featuring Gilman’s shrewd observations on our dysfunctional society and her fondness for overturning stereotypes.
"The first time I read it, it made me laugh," says Leigh. "And yet it’s poignant in places, too."
A lot of that poignancy comes from Curt, who, in his sincere efforts to help Sandy, ends up jeopardizing his relationship with his girlfriend Beth (Elinor Holt) and putting his career as a policeman on the line.
"Curt just wants to help people," says Leigh. "He’s that kind of compassionate person."
"Yet he screws everything up doing it," adds Trimble. "But what does Doug want? Just to have a good time, I guess. And anal sex." He’s not kidding. That seems to be the easy-going character’s only real obsession.
"Things happen to Doug and he just lets it slide," says Leigh. "He’s one of those guys who just seem to go through life and, regardless of whether or not things go wrong, they get by."
It’s not hard to imagine Leigh as Doug – after all, he recently finished his latest run as James, the compliant sidekick in The Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook, at Alberta Theatre Projects. But Trimble as Curt? Doesn’t he usually do comedy roles?
Not when Ground Zero artistic director Ryan Luhning gets a hold of him. Trimble’s credits at GZ to date have included a baby killer in last season’s Bash and a sleazy drug dealer in 1999’s Shopping and Fucking. Not exactly laugh-a-minute parts.
"Ryan seems to enjoy cross-casting me and challenging me," says Trimble. "I enjoy that. Ryan reads a lot of (playwright-director David) Mamet and Mamet is a huge subscriber to that philosophy (of casting against type). He believes you can get more naturalism out of the unnatural, uncomfortable situation."
"At first, we assumed I’d be Curt and (Trimble) would be Doug," says Leigh.
"This is definitely a different character for me," adds Trimble. "Curt is very much the straight man."
In fact, while a talented comedian, Trimble has his serious side. Although he cut his showbiz teeth as a song-and-dance kid with the Stampede’s Young Canadians (he was with the troupe from 1976 to 1984), he later took a degree in native studies at the University of Victoria with a view to becoming a lawyer specializing in aboriginal issues. When that didn’t pan out, he returned to his hometown and his stage background. He and Leigh met in the 1990s while they were both studying drama at the University of Calgary.
"We’ve been good friends ever since," says Trimble, although this is the first professional show they’ve performed in together.
Joining the guys are Connolly, who co-starred in Bash, Friesen, who was in Ground Zero’s CockTales 2 cabaret, and Holt, who recently starred in Boy Gets Girl. The director is promising up-and-comer Glenda Stirling, who has been working as a directing intern at the Shaw Festival and picked up the outstanding choreography prize at last year’s Betty Mitchell Awards for Quest Theatre’s Dolphin Talk. |
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