Notorious Vancouver strip club to host sinful theatre production
CBC News | Posted: February 16, 2018 7:43 PM | Last Updated: February 16, 2018
A Steady Rain opens Friday in iconic downtown venue with crime-ridden past
David Newham and Daniel Deorksen think it's a fitting choice to perform a play about debauchery and death in a Vancouver den of iniquity.
The co-producers and co-stars of A Steady Rain, which opens Friday at the Penthouse Night Club, hope to entice their audience with the historic pull of this downtown club.
"Back in its heyday it was a nightclub that everybody wanted to visit," said Newham, who'll be playing one of two Chicago police constables who find themselves caught up in some tough decisions.
"They find themselves playing both sides of the street, you might say, so we found this location thematically appropriate."
The vintage Vancouver club, known for its neon glare, saucy name and seven decades of bad behaviour, will host A Steady Rain in its "intimate" upper rooms, where stars such as Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald once retired for private after-parties.
The Penthouse legacy lives on as the backdrop to the Seven Tyrants Theatre Society production, the co-stars told The Early Edition's Margaret Gallagher.
"As you come up the stairs you notice some of the old pieces from those days are here — old menus, wine bottles cigarette packages," Newham said. "So visitors get a chance to see the history for themselves."
Since it opened in 1947, the building has borne witness to fires, robberies and even a murder.
"There is quite a history and I think you can feel that," said Newham, pointing to "similarities" between his character and the Penthouse's macabre past.
A Steady Rain, created by Mad Men and House of Cards writer Keith Huff, features two cops who inadvertently return a child to a serial killer, and are then left to deal with the consequences.
It opened on Broadway in 2009, starring Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman.
Deorksen said the story deals with the "fractured nature" of social systems.
"Although it was written a decade ago it seems to have conjured up premonitions of some of what's going on right now," he said.
The play weaves in themes that address police brutality, racism and inequality, which illustrates "the complicated places people get into, that force them to do sometimes incomprehensible things."
Deorksen wants audiences to walk away from the play with a desire to step outside of their own experiences and "look at every story from every side possible."
And they might start with the Penthouse itself, he said.
"People might look askance at the type of business that's here, but it also has a tremendous history."