The play by Roustabouts co-founder Will Cooper aims for laughs, but its bleak humor cuts too close to reality at times
The trilling of songbirds and bright music of the sort that accompanied a smiling Ward Cleaver’s return home after a long day at the office are heard as Roustabouts Theatre Company’s “gUnTOPIA” begins. A few minutes later, a brother and sister are pointing guns at each other in the living room and ... BANG! Brother shoots sister dead.The premise of Will Cooper’s very dark satire is that suburbia is populated by proudly gun-toting, gun-worshipping folks: parents and children and everybody else.
In “gUnTOPIA” everyone’s armed. Mom Mary Nelson carries her piece in a precious pouch below the waist of her dress. Precocious son Bobby waves his heater around wildly, pointing at — in particular — young Alice who has been adopted by the Nelsons after Bobby guns down sister, June. The fact that Alice and June look exactly alike, and might even be one and the same, is a “Twilight Zone” tease Cooper builds into this otherwise obvious script.
The most persuasive and engrossing moment of the play comes late, when Harry Nelson is orating for his son’s benefit on the history and necessity of humankind’s relationship with firearms. Johnson’s practically biblical recitation could be right out of the gun lobby’s playbook.
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