BLUE is a new play written by and co-starring award-winning US writer and performer June Carryl (Netflix’s Mindhunter, Disney+’s Helstrom), is now playing at the Seven Dials Playhouse in London’s Covent Garden.
BLUE garnered strong reviews in Edinburgh last year including a coveted Fringe First award from The Scotsman, and is a powerful examination of the recent racism crisis that has continued to plague policing both in the USA and UK.
Directed by Michael Matthews, BLUE stars writer June Carryl as Detective Parker, opposite John Colella as Boyd Sully.
BLUE is playing at Seven Dials Playhouse until 30 March 2024 (see ticket link, below).
What is BLUE about?
Blue is an unflinching study of the very real and current issues surrounding policing both in the USA and UK, and how a career ostensibly dedicated to the pledge to ‘protect and serve’ has become a magnet for those is search of power.
LAPD Detective LaRhonda Parker knows her colleague well. He’s a family friend and her husband’s ex-partner. But now he’s become the man who shot an unarmed Black motorcyclist at a traffic stop.
Newly promoted to The Force Investigation Department, Detective Parker’s first assignment is to investigate a 29-year police veteran, Sully. Initially she wants to believe him. But a disturbing revelation forces Parker to decide whether to protect “one of her own” or pursue an investigation that could up-end her marriage and her career.
As a Black woman in America, Carryl was inspired to write BLUE by the seemingly endless stream of tragedy she saw on the news – and from the revelation that, while many on-duty police were terrorised during the U.S. Capitol Riots, it has since been confirmed that a number of off-duty police were amongst the rioters.
BLUE shines a stark light on the ‘one bad apple’ attitude to police corruption and brutality, critiquing the culture that allows and encourages ever more bad apples, and transforms the role of modern-day police into a tool of authoritarianism.
In focusing down to the microcosm of a preliminary investigation into a single police custody death, BLUE peels back the layers beneath the “police as protectors” assumption to reveal not only the individual lives lost and destroyed by police corruption, but also just how endemic the problem has become.
BLUE hosting Black-out Nights
The production recently announced that it would be holding two Black-out Nights for the show, on 18 and 27 March 2024.
Black-out Nights are a special night where Black identifying guests are invited to enjoy the show and are welcome to linger after the performance with the playwright, cast, and director. The production put out a statement about their Black-out nights saying, “Theatre is historically a majority white space and these evenings are an invitation to shift the norm.”
June Carryl has commented about the value of Black-out Nights, saying recently that: “There is a sense of relief, connection with self and others. Part of what it is to be Black or Brown in a white world is that we don’t live in the same world. We aren’t all invited all the time. That one shares a common set of experiences about the world isn’t offensive. It just is.
“I’ll give you an example: when I was in graduate school in the 90s I went to see Thelma and Louise. I was told it was universal, I was told, it was every woman’s movie. I sat in the theatre vibing away, waiting to see myself in that story. You know when I showed up? With the Black guy riding the bicycle through the desert. The guy who blows pot smoke into the trunk of the cop car. If there is a metaphor deeply ensconced in there somewhere, um, thank you? But suddenly, I realized I wasn’t a “universal woman” the same way Thelma and Louise were. Not to that filmmaker. I was the butt of the joke.
“Why Black Out nights? Because different audiences get different things from a performance when they are amongst those who share common joys, common wounds. There is communion. It’s one night. No one’s saying you can’t go. But if you begrudge and take offense to that one night, then what you are saying is, “this has to be mine, too.” And if that is honestly how you feel, then maybe the problem is you.”
More about the cast and creatives of BLUE
June Carryl (Playwright, Parker) was raised in Denver and attended Brown University where she studied Political Science and English Literature. Her plays include NGGA BTCH (developed at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre and the Vagrancy), THE WRONGED PARTY (2022 IAMA Theatre’s Shonda Rhimes Unsung Voices Commission), COLOSSUS (2023 Ojai Playwright’s Conference, semi-finalist 2021 O’Neill Playwrights Conference), BLUE (2023 Scotsman First Fringe Award, Edinburgh Fringe Festival), FLORENCE & NORMANDIE (Playwrights Arena and UCLA, Diversifying the Classics) and GIRL BLUE (developed at CTG L.A. Writer’s Workshop). Theater credits include Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret (Celebration Theatre), Gerty Fail in Failure: A Love Story (Coeurage Theatre), the Nurse in Romeo & Juliet (A Noise Within), A.C.T’s Insurrection: Holding History, Berkeley Repertory’s Civil Sex and Thick Description’s Venus. Film and Television credits include: “Y: the Last Man,” “Helstrom,” and “Mindhunter.”
John Colella (Sully) is delighted to revive his role as Sully in BLUE, for which he and June made up the cast which received a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Selected Los Angeles theatre credits include 12 Angry Men and The Seafarer (Laguna Playhouse), nine productions at Ruskin Group Theatre including the world premiere of his solo show An Extraordinary Ordinary Man, the role of Miles, the Pinot Noir loving neurotic, in the original stage adaptation of Rex Pickett’s multi-award-winning story Sideways and in the title role of Cyrano de Bergerac as well as Aldo in Italian American Reconciliation. At Celebration Theatre, John performed in the musicals Cabaret, and The Producers, and at Theatre of NOTE in Niagara Falls. He appeared in Romeo and Juliet with The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra Hall) in Chicago. TV credits include “Family Guy,” “Brooklyn-Nine-Nine,” HBO’s “Silicon Valley” (recurring), “Hawaii Five-0,” “Criminal Minds,” “Hot in Cleveland,” “The Soul Man,” “Bones,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Will & Grace,” “NYPD BLUE,” “The West Wing” (recurring), and opposite HalleBerry in “Extant.” Selected film credits include The Chicago 8 and Hotel Noir, starring Danny Devito. John played opposite Carla Gugino and Alexis Bledel in Girl Walks Into A Bar.
Michael Matthews (Director) recently directed the World Premiere of BLUE at Rogue Machine and then again at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Selected credits include: Matilda (La Mirada), Failure: A Love Story (CTG/Kirk Douglas Theatre). Laguna Playhouse: The Seafarer, 12 Angry Men, The Graduate (w/ Melanie Griffith), Billy & Ray, and End of the Rainbow (also with La Mirada). Funny Girl (3D Theatricals), Sons of the Prophet (LA Premiere), Psyche: A Modern Rock Opera (World Premiere) Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mothers (LA Premiere), Very Still & Hard To See (World Premiere). Celebration Theatre: Cabaret, Dream Boy (LA Premiere), Bootycandy (LA Premiere), The Color Purple, What’s Wrong With Angry? (LA Premiere), Take Me Out!, The Women of Brewster Place, The Musical (West Coast Premiere), Stupid Kids (LA Premiere), Beautiful Thing, The Bacchae. Broadway: Butley (Assistant Director). International: Sleeping Giant and The Bacchae (Edinburgh Theatre Festival). Michael is the recipient of 2 Ovation Awards and 9 nominations, 1 LA Weekly Award and 2 nominations, 2 NAACP Theatre Awards, 1 Stage Raw Award, 3 Joseph Jefferson Award Nominations, and is the recipient of the 2015 LADCC Award for Career Achievement in Direction.
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