The story behind Vertigo Theatre's upcoming production, Noirville, began two years ago when Vertigo staged I'll Be Back Before Midnight, by Canadian playwright Peter Colley. "He [Colley] told me he had an idea for a play he hadn't written yet that would be in the style of film noir. I'm a big fan of film noir myself, so I told him, 'You write it, and I'll do it,'" laughs Vertigo artistic director Mark Bellamy.
Now, two years later, Noirville is set to make its world premiere on Vertigo's stage, under Bellamy's direction.
Noirville follows the story of a burned-out detective from the city who, looking for a more peaceful life, takes on the job of a small-town sheriff. However, he soon discovers there's more crime going on there than he ever faced in the big city. Along the way, he uncovers a dangerous secret. "As soon as I saw 'Welcome to Edenvale' written in flowers in the town square, I should have gotten the hell out of there,” the detective says at the play’s beginning. “Anytime you see anything written in flowers, it means people are going to start dying."
The French critic, Nino Frank, first coined the term "film noir" in 1946. It generally refers to a style of American crime drama that was popular in Hollywood from the 1940s through to the late 1950s. One of the defining features of film noir is the standard cast of characters. You generally will find a world-weary detective who hides any blows life has dealt him beneath a tough veneer; a seductive and sometimes dangerous femme fatale; and the requisite bad guys who are tied in with the city's criminal underbelly. The Noirville cast watched such film noir classics as The Maltese Falcon and Laura to prepare for their roles.
Noirville also uses dramatic lighting and a cinematic score to add to the sense of moodiness characteristic of film noir. Local musician and sound designer Andrew Blizzard composed nearly 100 pieces of original music for use in the production.
Bellamy says one of the biggest challenges in bringing the cinematic style to the stage involves the stylistic acting. "As good, Canadian, 21st-century actors, we want realism onstage," he says. But film noir requires a "heightened style" to really make it work, Bellamy explains, pointing to how fast the actors speak in film noir movies as one example. "We have to use that heightened level of performance, but still maintain the reality of the story," he says. "When we actually go there, it makes sense — the bigger it gets, the more real it gets.”
