In the 1940s, film noir, the highly stylized subgenre of crime movies, rose in popularity with films like The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Out of the Past (1947). Central to the their aesthetic was the use of black-and-white film and stark lighting to create gritty worlds with detectives and femmes fatales.
In 1989, playwright Larry Gelbart first attempted to bring the drama and intrigue of noir onstage with City of Angels. The endeavor paid off: The musical ended up winning six Tony Awards.
The show opens with detective Stone on a black-and-white set lying on a hospital bed as he recalls the events of the previous week—the seductive Alaura Kingsley pleaded with Stone to help her find her missing daughter, Mallory.
The scene shifts to the colorful world of crime writer Stine. As he toils away at his typewriter, the characters in the monochrome world begin to change their actions. Stone and Stine’s respective assistants begin to mirror each other.
In fact, the noir world is the screenplay that Stine is writing in the color world based off a hardboiled crime novel he wrote.
“You’re watching this guy write the screenplay in old Hollywood, but you’re also watching the movie itself,” explains Evan Hoffman, who will direct a production of the musical at NextStop Theatre Company this month.
The contrast between the color and black-and-white worlds presents a challenge for costume and set designers.
“Any musical theater nerd who says, ‘Oh, I love City of Angels,’ they tend to say, ‘good luck with the technical aspects of that,’” says actor John Loughney, who plays Buddy Fiddler, Stine’s producer, in the color world.
Hoffmann relishes the challenge.
“Figuring out how we make a person who looks like they’re in color stand right next to someone and make it look like they’re in black-and-white is an amazing, awesome challenge that we are still working through,” he says in between meetings on a busy day preparing for the production.
Hoffmann and Loughney have worked together previously in Gutenberg! The Musical! along with Ryan Burke, who plays Detective Stone.
“We’re kind of getting the team back together again, which is exactly what we all wanted at the end of Gutenberg, so we got our wish, I guess. I’m just really pumped. I’m all smiles on this end,” Burke says. // City of Angels runs May 12 through June 5 at NextStop Theatre Company.
(May 2016)
