Live Ammunition 

The Last Living Gun

The Last Living Gun is a work of theatre that demands, and rewards, patience.  The Impostors Theatre Company’s allegorical Western fantasy of two women dispatched to hunt down and retrieve the last gun in the world (for guns, and metal itself, otherwise no longer exist) begins in a deliberately awkward and ragtag style — seeming to be one of those off-putting zero-budget micro-theatre productions with painfully fake beards, awful thrift-shop costumes and acting that’s broader than the side of a barn.  

It takes a while to realize that this faux-amateurism is in service to a larger project, as the play, by Ryan Stevens, subtly shifts gears to become, first, droll and amusing and very much aware of its own silliness (one character drags around a severed foot on a rope attached to her ankle, and is oddly cheerful about it) and then, suddenly — like a gunshot — deadly serious, chilling, and powerfully resonant, ending in a Brechtian imprecation that will leave no audience member unshaken.  I don’t think I have ever seen another play that was so tonally jarring in such a calculated and effective manner.

The story is a complex and winding one, half fable and half odyssey, as one of the last survivors of a school shooting, a courier named Rose of Sharon Hutchins (Nyajai Ellison) and her sidekick Throatpin (Kati Yau) are dispatched from Needles, California by an aging business magnate named Father Calendar (Emily Gulbrandsen) to find the rumored last gun, a “fully loaded Colt 1873 single-action revolver.”  Father Calendar also dispatches another duo to keep track of Rose of Sharon and Throatpin on their quest; his thirst to own a gun again is powerful and all-consuming.  He explains, “I want to hold a gun once more in my life. I want to feel the steel. I want to rest my finger on a trigger and know the power concentrated in so small a package.”

As Father Calendar’s words suggest, this is an anti-gun play that acknowledges how powerfully seductive guns can be.  It’s a canny way to approach the topic; the vast majority of Americans are not polarized on the topic of firearms in the same way that politicians or the NRA or anti-gun groups are; most recognize the very real as well as psychological command that firearms exert — as well as their utility in hunting, sport and defense — but also acknowledge the need for sensible restrictions.  (Because there is nothing sensible, in any conceivable moral universe, about a mentally ill young man shredding the flesh and exploding the heads of kindergarten kids at will, and for no conceivable reason other than his delight in knowing that he can.) 

It isn’t until later in the play that Rose of Sharon meets an antagonist who is eerily emblematic of that seductive power, an apparitional entity named Our Lady of Scars who reanimates the deep trauma Rose of Sharon suffered in the school shooting, and is, as well, the school shooter herself — or at least the personification of the deep trauma Rose of Sharon experienced in the massacre.

The psychic and physical confrontations between Rose of Sharon and Our Lady of Scars — who indeed has x-shaped scars incising her eyelids — are at the heart of this powerful drama (for this a drama, and not in any real sense a comedy, despite some witty lines of dialogue and some other deliberately awkward or slapstick moments.) At one point, they wrestle, and nearly drown, in a tar pit that is cleverly evoked by a slowly billowing black sheet.  

Rose of Sharon rejects any praise for her brave quest to find and dispose of the gun:  “All you want to do is tell me how dangerous this is and how brave I am, but bravery’s got a low shelf life in this world, it is life-and-death, and it never ends, so there’s no joy or victory in any of it.”

Nyajai Ellison’s powerhouse performance is almost too big for the tiny theatre; she is phenomenally effective, especially at the end of the “show” — it hardly seems right to describe this call to conscience a mere show — when she begs the audience in an impassioned appeal to NOT to tell their friends about the play and NOT to come back themselves, because “the things I’ve seen in this? The things I’ve had to do? You just seeing this solved nothing. The problem isn’t gone!…Don’t make me do this anymore! Don’t make us shoot anymore! Don’t make us get shot!”

As Our Lady of Scars, Kayla Higbee, who has a steely presence that’s reminiscent of a young Jodie Foster, is powerfully menacing.  Also worthy of note in the cast is Tessa Marie Hoffman, who wields a wicked scimitar in her role as one of the trackers dispatched by Father Calendar and, in several other roles in the production, demonstrates an impressive mastery of amusing accents.  

What’s most interesting about The Last Living Gun other than the tonal trickery is the untrammeled path it takes; instead of taking the world as it is, and showing us the societal and psychological damage caused by the proliferation of firearms as so many other narratives have done, it imagines a world that isn’t, introducing into this seeming Eden the serpent, and then portraying what happens next.  But it isn’t even as simple as that; the fantasy America that Steven evokes may be free of gun violence, but is riven by competing clans and, oh, a vampire too. 

Special mention should go to the director, Stefan Roseen, who has not only brought to life an unusually complex and eclectic script but has also added into the mix a live musical ensemble (Dominick Alesia is the composer) as well as an ultra-catchy tune purloined from Guys and Dolls and sung by the cast, an a capella rendition of the old country hit “16 Tons,” and a hip hop paen to the Second Amendment. 

Some will find this play to be way too much of everything — too clever, too crowded, too complicated.  I can’t really argue the point.  But I was left feeling that, in this case, and for this subject matter, too much was just enough.  Though Rose of Sharon might plead otherwise, I encourage anyone interested in ambitious black-box theatre to brave the compelling complications of The Last Living Gun. 

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Michael Antman 

Presented September 29 through October 14 by Impostors Theatre Co. at the Den Theatre, 1313 N. Milwaukee.

Tickets are available at theimpostorstheatre.com

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found at www.theatreinchicago.com.