To Have and To Hold
HCC theater production explores a future without guns
Imagine a world without guns.
Not easy in today’s America, but that is the leap “The Last Living Gun,” a play by Ryan Stevens, asks the audience to make.
Set in a dystopian future where metal has all but rusted out, this play within a play follows a mercenary across a post-apocalyptic landscape, a la Mad Max, on an epic quest to find the last gun in existence, a “fully loaded Colt 1873 single-action revolver.”
“The Oats family revolver is just an old rumor,” says the story’s hero, Rose-of-Sharon Crutcher, a courier whose backstory includes exposure to gun violence as a young child.
“Not a rumor anymore. This is a weapon with history … and a future,” says her dying mentor, Father Calendar, who hires Rose to find the gun and bring it back.
The Holyoke Community College Theater Department will present “The Last Living Gun” Nov. 20-22 in the college’s Leslie Phillips Theater. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. each night with an additional matinee at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 22. The Friday, Nov. 21, show will be ASL-interpreted.
The play is guest-directed by Cordelia Winters Dwyer, a graduate student from the University of Massachusetts Theater program.
“I think today’s generation, and my generation before it, is constantly under the specter of gun violence,” said Winters Dwyer. “This is not even an anti-gun story, but if we don’t talk about the violence and the part of it that touches people, we are just doomed to repeat it forever and ever.”
The essential conceit of the play is that it is performed by a band of traveling players who take on multiple roles, with the narrator, Rose’s sidekick Throatpin, periodically breaking the fourth wall to directly address the audience. It has been described in reviews as “vaudevillian,” and a “post-apocalyptic spaghetti western.” It incorporates elements of theater of the absurd, as when Rose and Throatpin, played by HCC student Zachary Ciano of Springfield, set off on their journey astride a broom stick pony. It’s comedic, if not a comedy.
“I like big, weird stories,” said Winters Dwyer. “It’s kind of a circus.”
That’s not to say the play fails to confront important questions about gun culture, says Winter Dwyer: “Why would we want to find it? What would we do with it? What does it mean to have a gun? It’s a uniquely American play. I don’t think it would make any sense if you did it in Europe.”
On their travels, Rose and Throatpin encounter a gauntlet of violent characters bent on impeding their mission, including the Canton Possums, a football gang fixated on failure (ACL, Cornerback Tuck, Move-The-Chains, Kid Gridiron, and Audible Brady). Then there are Angel Mouth and Wallace, a pair of vaillains Father Calendar, in an act of betrayal, sends to disrupt Rose-of-Sharon's mission. Rose herself is haunted by a character called Our Lady of the Scars, a manifestation of her childhood trauma.
“We are all followed by the ghosts of experiences we’ve had,” said Winter Dwyer. “In this play, it’s just physicalized.”
The play, though, is not preachy, or depressing.
“It’s funny and goofy and zany,” said Winter Dwyer. “Guns are an ever-present figure in our daily discourse, but while drilling down on this very difficult, hot button issue, there’s a lot of levity. There’s a lot of people in the play. We pack the stage with pretty colors. There’s a lot of moving around and singing and dancing. It’ll be a good time.”
The Cast:
Rose-Of-Sharon Crutcher: Allison Morrissette, of Belchertown; Throatpin: Zachary Ciano, of Springfield; Father Calendar/Pratt/Cornerback Tuck: Ben Richards, of Springfield; Angel Mouth and Ensemble: Addi Hufnagle, of Southampton; ACL and Ensemble: Toby Stearns, of Southampton; Wallace and Ensemble: Casey Castenir, of East Brookfield; James, Gun Keeper and Ensemble: Bank Bernier, of Southampton; Kathleen/Audible Brady: Kazz Cuyler, of Holyoke; Screwtape Holliday/Constable Stoker: Chandler Frantz, of Easthampton; Kid Gridiron/ Move-The-Chains and Ensemble: Arianna Dávila, of Springfield; Our Lady of The Scars: Foster Schrader; Sheriff Pigeon/Hieronymus Cache/Boss Humble: MacKenzie Campbell, of Chicopee.
IF YOU GO:
“The Last Living Gun”
By Ryan Stevens
Directed by Cordelia Winters Dwyer
Nov. 20-22, 7:30 p.m.
Nov. 22, 2 p.m.
Holyoke Community College
Leslie Phillips Theater
Tickets: $10
(Available one hour before each show at the Leslie Phillips Box Office, call 413-552-2528 to reserve, or go to hcctheater.ludus.com to purchase in advance.)
PHOTOS: (Thumbnail) Allison Morrissette, as Rose-of-Sharon Crutcher, and Zachary Ciano, as Throatpin, rehearse a scene from The Last Living Gun. (Above) Addi Hufnagle, as Angel Mouth, and Casey Castenir, as Wallace, play villains sent to disrupt Rose-of-Sharon's epic quest.
