Blue Surge

The title may look misspelled to jazz fans old enough to notice -- "Blue Serge" is a Duke Ellington tune about a cheap serge suit -- but Rebecca Gilman intended it that way. Her kitchen-sink drama about a cop in a small Midwestern city is supposed to swell at the end with a surge of melancholy. The cop, named Curt (John Flanagan), is a working-class guy with an upscale girlfriend, Beth (Corie Henninger). His life is going well enough until he falls for a young prostitute in a massage parlor he's supposed to shut down. Then the slight class fissures that lace every relationship start to widen, and Curt finds himself a rider on a down-bound train, or however Bruce Springsteen would put it. Gilman, author of Spinning Into Butter and The American in Me, has written a funny, humane, but conventional script that for some reason gets a tepid performance from Magic Theatre's cast. Kirsten Rogers is sharp as the young prostitute, Sandy, but the normally potent Flanagan stumbles a bit in this role -- especially with his speeches -- for no apparent good reason besides lack of practice. The other actors seem unsettled in their lines, too. Maybe director Amy Glazer simply didn't rehearse her cast enough before opening night, but instead of a surge of blue, Gilman's melancholy ending is more of a discouraging bank of fog.