Following rave Edinburgh reviews and a Fringe First Award, tension-filled two-hander BLUE, will transfer to Seven Dials Playhouse from 5th – 30th March.

In this unflinching study of the very real and current issues surrounding policing both in the USA and UK, US based writer and actor, June Carryl deftly illustrates how a career ostensibly dedicated to the pledge to ‘protect and serve’ has become a magnet for those is search of power. BLUE is written by June Carryl and directed by Michael Matthews.

LAPD Detective LaRhonda Parker knows her colleague well. He’s a family friend and her husband’s ex-partner. But now he’s become the man who shot an unarmed Black motorcyclist at a traffic stop.

In BLUE, newly promoted to The Force Investigation Department, Detective Parker’s first assignment is to investigate a 29-year police veteran, Sully. Initially she wants to believe him. But a disturbing revelation forces Parker to decide whether to protect “one of her own” or pursue an investigation that could up-end her marriage and her career. This play is a powerful examination of the recent crises that has plagued policing both in the USA and UK.

Threading the needle connecting authoritarianism, power, and policing has never been timelier. As a Black woman in America, Carryl was inspired to write BLUE by the seemingly endless stream of tragedy she saw on the news – and from the revelation that, while many on-duty police were terrorised during the U.S. Capitol Riots, it has since been confirmed that a number of off-duty police were amongst the rioters.

The overwhelming fear of knowing that our police forces are easily corrupted is paralleled in the UK with the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer which resulted in the investigation and uncovering of misogynistic and racist failures in London’s Met Police in 2021, and the shooting of 24-year-old Black musician Chris Kaba – who was not a suspect of any crime – killed by a single shot to the head fired by an officer in south London in 2022 and resulting in a murder charge for the offending officer.
Both these instances and more since, have resulted in stoking tensions between police and community. BLUE is Carryl’s response to the deaths of citizens – overwhelmingly often, Black citizens – at the hands of police that continue to hit the news with alarming regularity.

BLUE shines a stark light on the ‘one bad apple’ attitude to police corruption and brutality, critiquing the culture that allows and encourages ever more bad apples, and transforms the role of modern-day police into a tool of authoritarianism. It is directed by Michael Matthews and is performed by writer June Carryl as Detective Parker, opposite John Colella as Boyd Sully.

In focusing down to the microcosm of a preliminary investigation into a single police custody death, BLUE peels back the layers beneath the “police as protectors” assumption to reveal not only the individual lives lost and destroyed by police corruption, but also just how endemic the problem has become.

Location: Seven Dials Playhouse, 1a Tower Street, London WC2H 9NP
How to get there: The nearest underground station are Leicester Square (Northern and Piccadilly lines), Tottenham Court Road (Northern and Central lines) and Covent Garden (Piccadilly line). The nearest rail station is Charing Cross.