"Many are likely to misconstrue Stephanie Alison Walker's new play FRIENDS WITH GUNS as a forceful defense of gun ownership. They couldn't be more wrong.
Second Amendment issues are peripheral to FRIENDS WITH GUNS.... Walker sounds a warning against the dangers of unbridled fanaticism, whether liberal or conservative in nature.
At its heart, the play is most cogently and pressingly about female empowerment, that most unsettling of worldwide political forces. From the Middle East to the American heartland, fundamentalists decry feminism as anti-Scriptural, anti-male and devastating to the status quo. Walker masterfully addresses that trend, inverting audience expectations with devastating skill.
Shannon, a struggling real estate agent, is the neurotically anxious mother of two young boys. Her husband, Josh, by contrast is an apparently easy-going guy whose relationship with Shannon hasn't been ruffled by dissension.
But when Shannon meets laid-back mom, Leah, at the park, Shannon believes she has finally found her tribe. That feeling seems confirmed when she and Josh join Leah and her husband, Danny, for dinner.
The politically liberal foursome appear to be natural soulmates. However, when Josh learns that Danny and Leah keep a small cache of guns locked in their garage, he's beyond outraged-unable to continue a friendship with "gun people," no matter how congenial. And when Josh later learns that his wife has been joining Leah on secret visits to a gun range-a practice that has allowed Shannon to lay aside her fears and embrace life as never before-he becomes progressively unhinged.
...Walker's script presents its fair share of surprises....
FRIENDS WITH GUNS is a subtle, savage feminist parable-a cautionary tale of the peril that may await women who dare to venture outside their accepted roles. The terror here is a monster who's so innocuous, appealing and just plain likable-until he's not."
F Kathleen Foley, Los Angeles Times
