I'm not one of the several theater critics quick to hail Rebecca Gilman as the playwright du jour and savior for the social-consciousness play. Her previous efforts, which include Spinning Into Butter and the male-stalker effort, Boy Gets Girl, intrigue with their initial tautness and tease of entering darker territory, but Gilman always makes the plays safer and more accommodating than they should be. It's almost as if a committee dictated their end results, because what begins as jolting drama ends up as flat tract. Blue Surge, however, is a different matter. It is as awkwardly aware of societal issues as Gilman's other works, but the canvas is much smaller and more personal. The play, therefore, proves more satisfying, simply because it doesn't feel like the author is continually pulling our leg. Blue Surge tells of a group of Midwesterners whose lives intersect as a result of the meeting of the law and the lawless. Two policemen, a responsible, decent one named Curt (Joe Murphy) and his best friend, the randier, more childlike Doug (Steve Key), are first seen staging a raid on a massage parlor located in a family-friendly district. Under orders from the department after getting heat from the Christian Coalition (the parlor happens to be located right next to a Ground Round), the men pose as clients undergoing sexual favors from the women of the parlor. Doug enthusiastically tears off his clothes and nakedly busts the brittle Heather (Colleen Werthmann), while Curt encounters the more cautious and headstrong Sandy (Rachel Miner), who immediately can smell that he's a cop. The girls are released on a technicality, and the men find themselves mysteriously drawn to them. Doug commences a relationship with the dim Heather (now a bartender in a hole-in-the-wall dump), and Curt finds himself delighted by the company of the lost soul Sandy, despite his engagement to Beth (Amy Landecker), a rich girl who may or may not be in love with Curt, and vice versa. Curt wants to save Sandy and soon devises ways for her to leave the sex industry. Sandy is vulnerable to Curt's kindness, but she's as street smart as Curt is sheepishly optimistic. Curt has a desire to be a forest ranger post-retirement, and Sandy helps him learn the leaf patterns of the wild, and soon they develop a consuming bond that that jeopardizes their situations. Sandy does not want to leave her sordid life, not even for Curt. The latter promises her a better life, even at the expense of his rocky life with Beth, who discovers his life on the side and cannot deal with it. Gilman's play falls into some of the standard traps of the man-saving-prostitute theme, but when the author zeroes in on the loneliness of Curt and Sandy, it achieves a woozy precision that works best when Gilman isn't making statements. Murphy and especially Miner find a touching resonance in these two characters, and their quiet approach is much appreciated. The remainder of the cast is more forward and animated but somehow less effective. This isn't necessarily their fault, as they have the lesser-imagined roles in the piece. Amy Landecker's Beth is a nearly unplayable role, and she suffers from a poorly-conceived second-act scene where her wealthy background comes into focus as a means for Curt to express their differences in growing up. It's a fairly lumbering bit of exposition and distracts from the rest of the play, which is less preachy than this wobbly and overlong scene. Director Robert Falls (Death of a Salesman) solidly captures a bluesy ambience for the play, aided by Walt Spangler's sleek, sliding set that changes from a bar to an apartment to a police precinct with surprising ease. Blue Surge is never quite as haunting and stirring as the Duke Ellington tune it lifts its title from (in a scene where its two principles discuss its oft-understood meaning), but the piece has waves of sound judgment that keep a viewer watching.
