In late 2008, when President George W. Bush's tenure was winding down along with the war on terror, renowned Vancouver visual artist Stan Douglas got to thinking how the political and economic climate then mirrored that of the end of the Second World War.
"There are some similarities," he said in a recent interview. "There was a recession, the global banking system was in shambles and had to be reorganized, there was a housing crisis as well as a shadowy threat to the U.S. — communism back then, and terrorism now."
Such thoughts eventually turned into "Helen Lawrence," a multimedia, whodunit mystery play about Vancouver in 1948. It's playing at Canadian Stage's Bluma Appel Theatre through Nov. 2 after runs in Vancouver, Munich and Edinburgh.
Douglas said he chose Vancouver as the setting for the story because it was a perfect representation of postwar transition, reorganization and urban expansion of the times, and it had the film noir look and feel he wanted to convey onstage.
He decided to focus on two parts of the city: Hogan's Alley and Hotel Vancouver.
Hogan's Alley was a legendary, multiracial neighbourhood filled with partying, bootlegging, prostitution and gambling. Close to the train station, it had a lot of traffic from people coming to or leaving the city.
Hotel Vancouver, meanwhile, was used as a hostel by soldiers who were homeless after returning from war.
The story features both neighbourhoods in states of upheaval, with the hotel about to be torn down and rumblings of Hogan's Alley being levelled as part of city-wide development.
Fictionalized characters include an ex-soldier running bookmaking operations out of the hotel, a police chief, and Buddy Black, the kingpin of Hogan's Alley.
Vancouver screenwriter Chris Haddock, who penned the play that's directed by Douglas, said some of the story was loosely inspired by a judicial police commissioner's inquiry in the mid-'50s into "the wholesale management of gambling and booze distribution and so on in Vancouver, and the granting of licences."
"It resulted in eventually the firing of about 60 or 70 members of the Vancouver police force, a widespread corruption scandal. So we dig right into the middle of that and refer to some of the politics of City Hall at the time and the residents of Hogan's Alley and their importance."
Haddock, creator of the TV series "Da Vinci's Inquest" who has also written for programs including "Boardwalk Empire," said he felt confident delving into that era because he once knew a couple of Vancouverites who were "peripherally" involved in some of the historical events that inspired the story.
"I was fortunate to meet some older guys when I was a younger writer who had lived in Vancouver and had torn up the town in the late '40s there," he said. "I knew them and had a real sense of who they were and how they carried themselves in that postwar period, the mixture of both the traumatic residual effects of the war and the great losses that many people had suffered."
Douglas, meanwhile, knew a guy who had a paper route in Hogan's Alley when he was a kid and whose father was a good friend of Buddy White, who inspired the character Buddy Black.
"The play is called 'Helen Lawrence,' but really it's Buddy Black's story," said Douglas.
Douglas depicts the story through visual art, live-action filming and computer-generated simulations on a blue screen-enclosed stage. The result is a production that's a hybrid of a black-and-white film and live theatre.
Some of the actors have to operate cameras during the show, which requires them to hit exact marks at specific times.
"This is a very precisely engineered piece," said Haddock. "You've got to hand it to the actors — these guys not only remember all their material and everything, but they're also shooting. So they come off pretty much drenched in sweat."
As such, Douglas admitted it would be tough for others to stage the show, which is a national co-production between Canadian Stage, Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre Company and the Banff Centre.
"It could be done, but it's extremely complicated," said Douglas.
Follow @VictoriaAhearn on Twitter.
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.