>>PREVIEW
LITTLE MERCY’S FIRST MURDER
Written by Morwyn Brebner
Music by Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli
Directed by Mark Bellamy
Ground Zero Theatre
Runs March 2-5, 7-12
The Studio
(Vertigo Theatre)
Think film noir and you’ll likely envision a Sam Spade archetype, chewing on a soggy cigar butt and talking sardonically about dames. His trench coat may be more or less filthy, the city more or less gritty, but the essentials of noir always remain the same – even if that same hardened urbanite were to break into song.
Morwyn Brebner’s Little Mercy’s First Murder is a curious anomaly: a mixture of two familiar modes that seem as though they couldn’t have less in common, with the darkness of noir threatening to become farcical in the energetic release of the musical, or simply to overshadow it. Of course, one of the most famous musicals of the last 50 years is an adaptation of the ever-dismal Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, a crime story replete with profound moral implications and its own fair share of death.
"The inspiration wasn’t at all to satirize or work in the film noir genre, it had a more organic origin than that," says Brebner. "Music is like an extra realm of theatricality, like extra theatrical space. So when you have music, you have another place to go emotionally."
Far from devolving into parody, Brebner’s own play fuses music and a dark sentimentality with a seamlessness that has already garnered critical acclaim. Ground Zero’s upcoming production is the third since its 2003 première, when it swept Toronto’s Dora awards in seven categories, including Outstanding New Musical and Outstanding Sound Design/Composition.
Following a single night in the life of the play’s eponymous female protagonist, Little Mercy’s First Murder is a series of snapshot vignettes seen through the eyes of Little Mercy (Elinor Holt) and her impromptu New York tour guide, Weegee the Famous (Doug McKeag). After the murder of her mother, Mercy stands accused and all but convicted at the scene of the crime by the nameless "Cop" (Hal Kerbes). The arrival of famed crime photographer Weegee provides the impetus for Mercy’s escape, as she and the cynical yet urbane Weegee are pursued by the nameless cop – a Javert to Mercy’s Jean Valjean.
Together, the two hop from a tenement fire to an opera house, from a murder scene to a bar whose main attraction is a transsexual lounge singer – Mercy, a 31-year-old spinster whose life has been lived vicariously through books, lives a lifetime in a single night, alongside the jaded Weegee.
Born Usher Fellig, the real Weegee the Famous served as the inspiration for Little Mercy’s First Murder. Even the play’s title derives from a photograph of wide-eyed young girls entitled "Their First Murder." A legend in his own time, his book of collected black-and-white photographs, The Naked City, is still considered one of the most striking portraits of New York ever taken.
For Brebner, the snapshots for which Weegee became famous were essential not only because of their subjects, but because of the elements that they captured. It’s a concept that certainly underlies the character of Mercy, whose relatively sheltered life makes a night of the real city, seen through the lens of Weegee’s camera, all the more fascinating.
"Art is knowing what to leave out. I feel like his photos have a focus on the essentials, they’re incredibly narrative and they’re the most black and white of black-and-white pictures, but not morally," says Brebner. "(His photographs are) very ambiguous. People have accused him of exploiting his subjects, but I think he allows them to be their most essential. That’s the art of it."
And yet, in spite of the darkly beautiful novelty of Mercy’s night on the town, its fleeting nature is almost an embedded tragedy, as the nameless cop follows, always closer. Noir elements and musical interludes all fuel the relationship between Mercy, Weegee and the city streets, a growing love of a sort that can only live in the New York night. But just as the fusion between noir and music in Little Mercy’s First Murder doesn’t diminish either element, Brebner refuses to allow the fact that Mercy is only afforded a single night of experience to render her character’s life a tragedy – the inevitable plight of every self-respecting film noir female.
"(Mercy’s) circumstances are ones that so many people live in: your mind is boundless but your physical circumstances are so prescribed, what you want and what you can do with your life are too different. There’s no outlet," says Brebner. "Mercy has a passionate desire to be touched by life, and she forces Weegee to confront this, and he’s not able to remove himself from it in the way he can. So much of life is a struggle between the desire for safety and the desire for excitement, and Mercy recognizes the incredible opportunity of life that Weegee doesn’t.
"It’s about her desire to experience the world," says Brebner, "and she does get to do that." |
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