Simon Ward reviews BLUE at the Seven Dials Playhouse

This is the London premiere of June Carryl’s important, powerful and devastating play, BLUE. It is set in an interrogation room familiar from a thousand police procedurals with its dirty grey walls, two-way mirrors and an ancient cassette recorder to ensure that every incriminating word is recorded as evidence. The audience is gathered around the table, as though eavesdropping on the conversation. (A word of warning – the theatre is small and those seated in the back row closest to the action will be peering around the heads of those in front.)

As we enter the room, Sully (John Colella, assured and all-too-convincing) is already pacing the floor, nervously anticipating what it is to come – it is to be an interrogation, and he is to be on the receiving end. As Parker (playwright June Carryl, superb) enters, the atmosphere changes. The pair clearly know each other, and Sully, in particular, is keen to reminisce over times past. Parker, on the other hand, has a job to do, and she is determined to do it thoroughly and professionally.

Formally, this is the most straightforward production I have seen in a long time. The entirety of the action takes place in real time, in the sixty minutes that we sit, glued to our seats, as the tension builds in masterly stops and starts to breaking point. But this straightforward approach allows the cut and thrust of the interrogation to shine through all the more clearly. Directed by Michael Matthews, Sully’s restless and jittery nervous energy contrasts with the level-headed business-like approach of Parker. It is striking that the younger black woman holds all the power over the older white man. It is no doubt one more thing to add to Sully’s feelings of grievance.

The play is quite precisely set in Los Angeles in March 2021. There are reminders on the noticeboard of mask wearing mandates. Everyone is beginning to emerge from a strange, tense time. And not only because of the pandemic. When it transpires that Sully had been there, just a couple of months earlier, when the Capitol was being stormed by insurrectionists, a pattern begins to emerge. He believes that the barbarians are at the gate, and it is his duty to hold them back. The problem is – who gets to define who the barbarians are? When those charged with a duty to protect and to serve take it upon themselves to decide who deserves protection and who destruction, innocent lives will be lost based on nothing but lies and suspicion.

Parker’s apparent calm is an act – she keeps a lid on her feelings as much as she can but in the end they cannot be held in check forever, and she explodes with righteous indignation and rage against a man who feels no remorse whatsoever for his actions. He feels justified in killing an entirely innocent black man based on a set of ill-founded prejudices – he was driving the wrong sort of car, he was in the wrong neighbourhood, he was rude. Race is unspoken, but lies behind them all. The tragedy is, for all Parker’s diligence, that he will probably get away with it – early retirement, perhaps, but no real sanction. As the play ends with a litany of names of black and Latino people who have been killed by police officers, we cannot help but share Parker’s deep misery and despair.

BLUE is running at the Seven Dials Playhouse, 1A Tower Street, London WC2H 9NP until 30th March 2024.