Who Stops a Bad Guy with a Gun?

So far this year, there have been at least 50 school shootings in the United States—more than one a week—37 in K-12 schools and 13 on college campuses. Twenty-four have died, and at least 66 others have been injured—and counting.

The marvelous world premiere of David Rambo’s “A Good Guy” now playing at LA’s Rogue Machine Theatre takes dead aim on this singular American tragedy. Even as a young girl, Anna—touchingly played by Evangeline Edwards—would line up her dolls like the classroom she saw herself leading. Now, clearly a caring, masterful mathematics teacher, Anna is living her dream, viewing the 200 high school students in her classes as the children she hasn’t, and may never, have.

Evangeline Edwards, Suzen Baraka, and Wayne T. Carr.

But when the curtain rises, Anna is being grilled, gently at first and then not so gently, about what she saw and heard and did during that morning’s horrific active shooter attack. Playing a bit of good cop, bad cop, the male detective played by Wayne T. Carr presses her to remember everything that happened. His partner, played by Suzen Baraka, offers Anna a soothing shoulder, no doubt to soften her up.

Carr and Baraka do a marvelous job during the 75-minute one-act play of playing first this character and then the next. In addition to playing the lead detective, Carr is the school’s principal and Anna’s soldier husband just returned from Afghanistan, who insists that Anna purchase a gun for when she’s alone in their remote country home. Among other quick-change roles, Baraka plays Mrs. Wizner, Anna’s inspiring childhood teacher, a slick NRA attorney, and the District Superintendent.

What we have is the full weight of America’s broken relationship with guns falling on the head of a single classroom teacher who just wants to make the world a better place by preparing her students for the rich, full lives they deserve, but instead is caught in the callous crosscurrents of our nation’s utter inability to deal with the gun violence that is making war zones of our schools, our movie theaters, our shopping malls, our houses of worship….

Do yourself a favor and grab a ticket to this winner.

Rogue Machine’s A Good Guy is being performed 8 p.m. on Mondays and Fridays (no performance on Friday, September 20); 5 p.m. on Saturdays; and 7 p.m. on Sundays through October 13 (expect an extension) at the Matrix Theatre upstairs in The Henry Murray Stage, 7657 Melrose Avenue, L.A., California, 90048. For reservations, call ​(855)585-5185 or here.