Vancouver The Venal

Saturday night, I attended a "live film noir" at the Bluma Appel Theatre. The main conceit of the play Helen Lawrence was the projection of the action, along with some technological wizardry, onto a scrim covering the front of the stage.

After a short visit to an insane asylum in L.A. in 1947, most of the action took place in Vancouver with a large cast of characters including corrupt cops, "coloured" gangsters, molls, and other low lifes. Helen Lawrence (Lisa Ryder) came North to track down Percy Walker (Nicholas Lea), a smooth talker who may have murdered Lawrence's husband and set her up to take the fall. Meanwhile, there was blackmail, double-cross, and other nefarious going-ons in the grimy areas of town.

As some actors played their scene, others operated cameras that projected the action on the "big screen". The marvel was the addition of background, so that the bare stage (with some props like chairs or boxes) was replaced on-screen with CGI-rendered hotel rooms, back alleys, cop cars and hallways. There were also cutaways that had fully realized images of various Vancouver locales.

A fellow patron dismissed it all as "why bother with theatre if you're doing all close-ups?" I enjoyed the play more than she did, but I do agree that it was more movie than play. The whole thing felt a bit like a stunt, similar to those "one-take, live episode" of E.R. or some other TV shows. Its main fault was the unwieldy script, a good half of the cast could be chopped. A film noir should be lean and mean.

The "Hollywood" (real-life vs. cinema) aspect should also have been played up. For example, I enjoyed the contrast between the characters in normal, sometimes colourful, clothes and their black-and-white projections. Was it real or were we on a 40s sound lot? Instead of limiting the cameras to the front and have its operators (as mentioned, also actors in other scenes) in shadows, why not include them with the staging? An actress could finish her lines, and drag a camera into use for a different scene. Over the shoulder shots ... why not? Placing cameras all over the stage might have made the green screening more difficult, but still doable. Perhaps the effects could even be projected directly onto the stage, which is also within the realm of the possible.

Ultimately, Helen Lawrence seemed to be a weak attempt at Tear The Curtain. Kim Collier, who created and directed the latter play, was originally onboard for Lawrence but was no longer involved. Her vision might have saved this production.