Almost Blue, Next Theatre Company.
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An homage to the noir tradition, Keith Reddin’s semithriller began life as a teleplay–a fact that sadly still shows. Though Almost Blue is energetically performed by a well-cast quartet in Steve Pickering’s taut and evocative staging for Next Theatre, the play remains a formulaic actors’ exercise, soaked in atmosphere but dramatically unsatisfying despite its supposedly staggering ending.
The cast are clockwork. Thomas Kelly’s hangdog Phil makes a stunning contrast to Soseh Kevorkian’s man-eating Liz, a Sharon Stone clone who improves on the original. An even more divergent pair are William J. Norris’s self-effacing Blue, a cipher who feeds on the sensations of others, and Michael Park Ingram’s silky-smooth thug, a macho, muscular menace. But unfortunately Reddin loses track of this dark force, a lapse that James M. Cain or Raymond Chandler would never have allowed.
