Meet Mickey Giordano, Vancouver private eye, c. 1949

“In the neon city of Vancouver, secrets that hide in the shadows are bread-and-butter for Mickey Giordano. The East-End prizefighter-turned-private eye knows how to play rough on behalf of a paying client. But  he’s also in the corner of the victims of crime and corruption; the innocent – and not-so-innocent – he meets along the way”

White Rock director-actor-playwright Alex Browne is back – with an atmospheric, full-length ‘radio noir’ play, Blue Prelude, at Peninsula Productions’ studio theatre in Centennial Park (14600 North Bluff Road).

The four performances are on Saturday, Sept. 30 and Sunday, Oct. 4, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. each day.

Written by Browne (The Dawn Patrol, White Rock Players; The Adventures of Max Bennett, Dreaming Elephant) and presented in vintage radio style, complete with commercials – and authentically dressed by co-producer and costumer Kat Siemens – it’s a fond tribute to the noir esthetic of the 1940s and 1950s and the bad old days when crime and corruption were rampant in the neon-lit streets of Vancouver.

“It’s really a film noir created for the ears – and the imagination – of the listener,” said Browne, whose original script deliberately evokes echoes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane and many of the classic movie adaptations of their novels.

No stranger to local audiences, Browne was the Suspense announcer for the classic radio play Sorry Wrong Number and director of the Agatha Christie thriller The Stranger, both for Peninsula Productions in 2022.

He’s also well known as a bandleader (featured at Peninsula Productions’ April gala this year) and as a long-time reporter for the Peace Arch News.