'Surge' works because of engaging characters
By Hedy Weiss | Chicago Sun Times Critic | March 26, 2009
In Rebecca Gilman's finest plays -- and "Blue Surge," now in a sensationally good revival at Eclipse Theatre, is high on the list of her best -- the notion of social class moves from being a theoretical abstraction or tax bracket identifier to becoming a profound psychological determinant in American life.
Forget notions of social mobility, Gilman tells us. The fix is in from early on. What might seem like small, easily camouflaged scars -- the result of having the "wrong" dress for a school dance or a subpar diploma (from, say, a community college) -- only grow thicker and more disfiguring with time. And attempts to deny this -- whether by education, the work ethic or an accepting relationship with someone more privileged -- rarely help heal such scars, and sometimes exacerbate them.
This is what "Blue Surge" is all about. But Gilman has devised such an engrossing, sexy, brutally honest (and very adult) drama that you never feel you are being lectured. Rather, she draws you in to what appears to be a fairly routine police drama, and then reveals what truly makes her characters tick.
It all begins in a massage parlor that has triggered complaints from a conservative coalition that objects to such an operation being next door to a popular family restaurant. Working undercover, two cops and longtime friends -- Curt (Kevin Scott) and Doug (Nathaniel Swift) -- take turns trying to gather compromising evidence against the place. Serious, tense and a bit awkward, Curt makes an unexpected connection with the stunningly beautiful, edgy and very young Sandy (Laura Coover), while Doug, a lackadaisical mischief-maker, messes up the job with the overtly slutty Heather (Sasha Gioppo).
Curt's long-held desire to get a promotion is undermined by the botched job. So is his serious but subtly troubled relationship with his girlfriend Beth (Kerry Richlan), an arts education teacher from a wealthy family who wants him to succeed on a level that approaches her own standards.
In an act of salvation that ends up being his own undoing, Curt, a decent man, tries to save Sandy from a life of prostitution. He also faces certain truths about himself and Beth.
Under Anish Jethmalani's insightful, crackerjack direction, Scott (in a wonderfully understated performance) and Coover (a petite blond knockout with star quality, who also is a sensational actress) create the perfect chemistry. Swift (who has a few moments of full frontal nudity) brings just the right mix of devil-may-care hedonism and sensitivity to Doug, with Gioppo just right as the flashy good time girl he quiets down. As for Richlan, she delivers the play's most crucial speech with every bit of clarity and self-knowledge it requires.
Yes, there is a big blue surge of sadness in this play. But in a strange way it leaves you buoyed.
Link: http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/weiss/1495844,CST-FTR-Weiss26.articleEclipse's 'Blue Surge' is at home in smaller space
By Chris Jones | Chicago Tribune Critic | March 25, 2009
The playwright Rebecca Gilman came to the fore in a Chicago storefront theater—or, more precisely, a Forest Park storefront theater. The searing force of the 1996 Circle Theatre production of "The Glory of Living" lives with me still, but Gilman long ago moved on and up to the Goodman Theatre, the New York Public and London's Royal Court (among many other frequent producers of her works).
But in its ongoing exploration of this internationally accomplished scribe, the Eclipse Theatre has been making a very strong case that many of her plays work best in a storefrontlike setting.
The Eclipse production of "Blue Surge," a 2001 Gilman drama that went from the Goodman to the Public, is certainly a down-and-dirty, Chicago-style affair.
The set is a vague, rough-and-ready collection of walls, colors and shadows and, on opening night Monday, the lights seemed to be going haywire.
But this is a play about the white working-class—ill-educated young people trapped in a minor Midwestern city, haunted by dysfunctional parents and unable to get their acts together. In this play, most of the characters are either prostitutes (the massage parlor sits next to the Ground Round) or cops. When the latter are not arresting the former, they are becoming romantically entwined.
One of Gilman's main points is that these groups aren't separated by moral rigor or driving purpose but by expediency. Everybody went to the same high school.
This play looked rather too small for the Goodman in 2001, but in the tiny upstairs Greenhouse space, its truths ring a lot deeper.
None of this would be the case, of course, if Anish Jethmalani's production didn't come replete with some powerful Chicago-style acting. But it surely does. And these actors kick up some dust.
In the central role of Sandy, high school graduate turned flexible massage therapist, Laura Coover has all the right qualities, including a smartly sardonic style, a vulnerable core and bright eyes that suggest her character wants, and is capable of, so much more than performing sexual favors for $40. The other dead-on performance comes from the Eclipse veteran Nathaniel Swift, who cleverly captures the slippery sensibility of a just-getting-by cop, going nowhere and, luckily for him, at peace with his own total lack of ambition.
As the play's authority figure (and upper-middle-class interloper), Kerry Richlan is shrewdly patronizing, and there's also solid work from Kevin Scott (as the cop who gets too emotionally involved) and the colorful Sasha Gioppo (as a working girl mostly happy to be working).
The times have caught up with "Blue Surge," a play that, in 2001, was prescient enough to observe that the recession started much earlier in the decade for some sectors of the population.
Link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0325-blue-surge-eclipse-ovnmar25,0,5462823.story