Blue Surge is a rare bird: a first-rate, working-class drama. It's a hot, very funny, contemporary comedy, perfectly cast: Rachel Miner, Joe Murphy, Colleen Werthmann, Steve Key, Amy Landecker are directed with energy and great timing by Robert Falls. The show's well designed by Walt Spangler, costumed by Birgit Rattenborg Wise and lit by Michael Philippi. The people are proletarians: cops, hookers, the uneducated working class (except for a middle-class girlfriend of one of the cops as a contrast in aspirations). They have a simple earthy sensuousness, with limited imaginable possibilities, and no solutions.
Clifford Odets isn't writing today, but author Rebecca Gilman's concerns about the frustrations of people trying to (perhaps) surge upwards, might be his, and Falls's flair keeps the audience riveted.
