Review: BLUE at Rogue Machine At The Matrix Theatre

Matters are getting even more rogue-ish at the Matrix Theatre.

Not only is the Rogue Machine Theatre - one of the finest companies in the city - ensconced at the Melrose Avenue theatre for the foreseeable future, the company has introduced an exciting new performance space. RMT has converted an upstairs conference room into the Henry Murray Stage which will now house small world premieres and workshops. The seal has been broken on the Murray space with the world premiere of BLUE, a two-character world premiere by June Carryl. Transforming the space into a Los Angeles Police Department interrogation room, the snug and expertly-fashioned space (we go up a stairway, passing through a metal detector) is a slick marriage of work and venue. Short of sticking us all behind the two-way mirror, Michael Matthews's production plunks the 30 members of the audience powerfully - and a bit claustrophobically - into the proceedings. As a veteran cop is debriefed and questioned by an investigating detective who is also a friend and the wife of his former partner, we audience members in attendance get an up close view of every fidget, every trickle of sweat.

And that's a treat. Carryl's play is as tight as it is immediate, an inspired-by-the-headlines jolt of storytelling that cuts across racial unrest, the psyches of our men in blue and even the January 6 insurrection. Performers Julanne Chidi Hill and John Collela do solid work as a pair of colleagues and comrades-in-blue turned adversaries under Matthews's taut direction.

The one thing BLUE is not is dramatically plausible, and you will need to willingly suspend disbelief on its premise. If an officer of Boyd Sully's status and pedigree were involved with an incident of this degree of seriousness, there is no way in navy blue blazes that any law enforcement agency - much less one the size of the LAPD - would assign a family friend of the officer under suspicion to conduct the investigation. And if I'm tracking the sequences of this play correctly, it feels like the investigation is seriously in the weeds barely a day after the incident. This being the case, the LAPD has done some rather deep research awfully quickly. As long as you can accept this, the rest shouldn't be a problem.

OK, then.

Sully, a white cop, is accused of shooting and killing a Black man who sped away from him following a routine traffic stop. The victim was a veteran, a family man and the incident took place less than a block from his house. Sully maintains he smelled marijuana, insisted the victim didn't obey orders and that he did everything by the book. Detective LaRhonda Parker (who is Black) starts the interview collegially, catching up with an old friend, before gradually putting on her bad cop detective persona and systematically tearing holes not just in Sully's problem-ridden account of what went down, but also his checkered professional history.

Although the issues in play are complicated and made more so by the fact that police are themselves being targeted, Boyd Sully is not a much of a cop, much less of a human being. Parker has some damaging footage from a certain event in early 2021 to prove it. Trouble is, Sully also has some incendiary information of his own.

If this feels like the above-described should be streaming on a device near you, well, you're not far off. There's something a bit police procedural about this dance. All the same, Colella and Hill play all the beats, navigating each shift in the power dynamic with conviction and absolute finesse. When Sully is left waiting in the empty interrogation room for a couple of anxiety-provoking minutes before Parker arrives, we see from Colella's antsy manner that he's in a sweat. When, of all people, his former partner's wife walks in the door with a stack of files, Sully can only laugh and say, "Wow. They sent you, huh? That's - wow." He thinks he's got this. He is mistaken.

Over the course of the next 60 minutes, Colella does a fantastic job of depicting a dirty cop who believes he is not only a protector of the people, but a patriot to boot. The realization that a man she thought she knew is, this kind of a person hardens Hill's Parker and then it outrages her. The two actors proceed to beautifully establish and destroy a friendship before our eyes.

Our proximity to the actors and the action makes the experience that much more unsettling. Nobody should have to witness a proud man's fall or a principled cop's compromise; with Matthews steering the ship and Hill and Colella as his co-pilots, we get a front row seat to both occurrences.

Kudos once again to the Rogue Machine. Can't wait to see what they'll stick in that snug little space for an encore, and whether it will involve metal detectors.

BLUE plays through May 14 at the Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave., L.A.

Photo of Julanne Chidi Hill and John Colella by Jeff Lorch

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