BY STEPHEN HUNT, CALGARY HERALD NOVEMBER 27, 2010 3:07 AM
Vanessa Holmes and Chad Nobert star in The Blue Room, a comedy about contemporary sexuality, where people adjust their personalities according to the lover they are with.
Photograph by: Ted Jacob, Calgary Herald, Calgary Herald
Vanessa Holmes' first reaction, upon being offered the lead in Sage Theatre's production of The Blue Room, was resistance.
After all, the play, a 1998 drama by David Hare that was an adaptation of Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler's notorious 1900 drama, came with a rep.
Mainly that was owing to the casting of Mrs. Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, in the 1998 Broadway production, which one critic famously described as pure theatrical Viagra.
Partly, it turned out, because in one scene Kidman flashes her bare butt to the audience.
"When I first read it, I think I was a bit overwhelmed by the sexuality of it," Holmes says. "Having read a bit of press on it and going, I don't know if I want to do a play that's all about sex."
However, after a while, Holmes started to see the play in a different light.
"I realized there was more to it," she says. "It is so much more than that. It's about . . . what you get from different relationships in your life, what you need from different people, which is interesting and kind of universal. Sex is interesting and universal, but so are relationships and so is love and needs and desires and things like that."
She took the part.
The play is about the sexual couplings of 10 characters, who are all played by two actors (Holmes and Chad Nobert). The setting of The Blue Room is one of the world's great cities, and the characters range from a cab driver to an au pair, from a model to an aristocrat to a student to an actress.
Structurally, each character appears for two scenes, then the play follows a new character.
For Sage's artistic director Kelly Reay, the appeal of the play lay in its humanity.
"So much is made about the sex and sexual content of this play," Reay says, "and sure there was an appeal there, but more important was the why behind why we get ourselves into these situations: why do people behave like they do in pursuit of, in this case sex, but in a grander sense, fulfilment?"
One of the more fascinating aspects of the play is how one character can reveal quite a different character depending on who they're with.
In a way, the play seems to be saying, each of our identities depends on who we're talking to.
"You can see, between each character's scenes, how people's behaviour changes depending on what we need from who we're with," Reay says. "We act differently when we're with one person than when we're with other people. In this case, examining something very specifically like sexual desire, but even within that pursuit, how we're different people, depending on who we pursue that from."
What The Blue Room reveals about humanity, Reay feels, is something quite simple: people don't change much.
"As much as technology and everything have changed," Reay says, "us as people -- our instincts and behaviour -- is unchanged and in so many ways.
"I don't think that's a bad thing, either," he adds. "We're animals. We have instincts, we have urges and needs, and that hasn't changed in a hundred years, or 500 years. I think what has changed is society's acceptance of that a little bit."
As far as that famous baring of the butt scene that made a lot of Broadway ticket scalpers a little bit richer, it's a little more discreet in this Blue Room, says Holmes -- not because she wanted to be less sexy, but more.
"It's a really small space," Holmes says. "In my opinion, if you do nudity in theatre, it's so tricky, because it can be so distracting."
Instead, she opts for scantily clad.
"There isn't full nudity, but there's definitely body parts exposed," she says. "I've got my show bra and my show underwear.
"One thing we've talked about in rehearsals," she adds, "is what's (sexually) exciting is the lead up to all of that -- the expectation of it, or the imagination of it, or what something could be is always more exciting than having it shoved in your face. So it's definitely sexy, and I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it. Once you fit it into the scene, and it makes sense, then I'm comfortable with it."
shunt@calgaryherald.com
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Preview
Sage Theatre presents The Blue Room at the Pumphouse through Dec. 4.
Tickets: 403-263-0079, Ext. 2 or boxoffice@pumphousetheatre.ca.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
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