A scene from Frank Higgins’ Gunplay, “Moonglow,” with Ryan Richard Doyle and Schanaya Barrows.
Shout what you think.
We shout out our politics, our views, our beliefs. We shout so loud, sometimes it sounds like gunfire.
Sometimes it is gunfire.
The discourse about guns gets loud. Angry voices dominate; listening has no place. We don’t argue to change minds, we argue to defend ourselves.
Unfortunately, if that discourse somehow ever changes, Frank Higgins’s “Gunplay: A Play About America,” onstage now in the Sophia Gordon Center at Salem State University, won’t be the reason.
Higgins’ string of disconnected, satiric vignettes, claiming to challenge both sides of the gun debate, doesn’t. It’s hard to see how it could. “Gunplay” was a commission from Iowa City’s Riverside Theatre, after the 1991 mass killing at the University of Iowa.
The play paints a sad and fanciful picture of gun-loving America, past and present. But actual gun owners would have a hard time finding anything sympathetic in “Gunplay”—or more precisely, anything that challenges the notion that guns are simply a plague on our society.
Benny Sato Ambush, distinguished director of many productions, makes his company debut here. As can be expected with the energetic SSU players, the acting and staging was first-rate. A large cast each brought multiple roles to life, injecting urgency into lines that all-too-often lacked any oomph.
“Gunplay” has too many individual vignettes, and they lack pace or direction. The short scenes could easily have been placed in different sequence. Higgins tries to turn arguments upside-down, most often putting the stereotypic words of gun owners into the mouths of gun haters, or vice-versa.
Those vignettes that aren’t unquestionably satirical—the fantastical “Moonglow,” a probing “Father and Son”—were effective because they weren’t preachy. The more off-topic the scenarios got, the more on-target the impact.
The acting was uniformly well-prepared. Ryan Richard Doyle’s physical versatility invested several roles with thoughtful energy. Madison Gallagher’s Woman Cop sounded real. Schanaya Barrows’ portrayal of the imaginative kid from the projects rang true.
But overall, “Gunplay” simply lampoons everyone over their tightly wound opinions on guns, gun owners and gun victims. A much-too-easy target. The scenes trade far too facilely on the emotions of anyone worn out by repeated, senseless shootings. In it’s convoluted way, “Gunplay” offers a vapid “thoughts and prayers” on the issue.
Gun owners would likely scoff at the notion of equal viewpoints in “Gunplay.” Nowhere are the cogent reasons for gun ownership—a love of the outdoors, an environment awareness that includes hunting and sport, practiced by those who honor a strict code of gun safety and education—not once are those arguments made (or even lampooned) in “Gunplay.” Gun rights and laws are an issue that seemingly can’t be productively argued. But outrage makes too easy a target.
“Gunplay” runs at Salem State University’s Sophia Gordon Center through Oct. 27 (salemstate.edu/arts). This is a month of promising activity on the North Shore community theater scene. Gloucester’s Rogers Street Theatre (rogersstreettheatre.org) has re-emerged, with the Fishtown Players (fishtownplayers.com) staging Theresa Rebeck’s “Mauritius” Nov. 1–10, and the Cape Ann Shakespeare Troupe playing Noël Coward’s “Hay Fever” Nov. 15–24.
The Gorton Theatre hosts Phoebe Potts’ comic look at adoption “Too Fat for China” Nov. 23–Dec. 1, after the Gloucester Stage Company’s run of “Hamlet” (Oct. 25–Nov. 17; gloucesterstage.com) concludes.