Playwright David Rambo tackles the hot-button topic of school shootings from the point of view of a teacher who takes matters into her own hands in A Good Guy, a gripping, suspenseful, surprise twist-packed Rogue Machine World Premiere.

The instructor in question is Anna (Evangeline Edwards), who has never wanted anything more out of life than to dedicate hers to teaching, and though her 200 pubescent eighth graders present unique challenges, when she sees the light go on in a student’s eye because they “make a connection between what you’re teaching now and something they learned before, that’s everything.”

What Anna could never have imagined when she first envisioned becoming a teacher would be that one day she’d be keeping a Glock 42 (“a lady gun, a mouse gun”) in a locked gun box in a locked desk drawer during teaching hours, or that one day she’d be telling a couple of cops that “I stopped an insane boy from murdering children.”

Over the course of A Good Guy’s intermissionless seventy-five minutes, a series of flashbacks cue us in to the events leading up to a shooting that left two adults and eleven children dead, including the shooter, and eight more hospitalized, some in critical condition.

Playwright Rambo then takes us back two years to the school’s faculty lounge, and then forward beyond that to the principal’s office, to the house Anna shared with her husband Michael until his deployment to Syria, to the Walmart where Anna supplements her teacher’s salary two nights a week and all day Sunday, then back to the interrogation that started things off, and ultimately to the start of a new school year and beyond.

Along the way, A Good Guy asks audiences to put themselves in Anna’s shoes, first as as she was in the days and years leading up to the shooting and later in the days and months that follow as her life spirals ever more out of control in ways neither she nor we could ever have imagined.

This is powerful, thought-provoking stuff that not only puts a personal face on the issue of arming teachers against potential shooters but kept me on the edge of my seat for an hour and fifteen minutes, and had me gasping inwardly at one shocker of a plot twist after another.

Rogue Machine’s uber-intimate upstairs Henry Murray Stage once again lets audiences be flies on the wall as director John Perrin Flynn elicits yet another stunning star turn from Breakout Performer Of The Year Scenie winner Edwards, running the gamut of emotions from fear to shock to anger to outrage to despair and perhaps, dare I say it, to hope.

Wayne T. Carr and Suzen Baraka provide topnotch support throughout the play as detectives investigating the shooting and as fellow teachers, with Carr doubling as the school principal, Anna’s husband Michael, and a shooting range instructor, and Baraka as Anna’s beloved pre-school teacher Ms. Wizner, the school district superintendent, and a lawyer with an ulterior motive for visiting Anna’s home.

Last but not least, Logan Leonardo Arditty, fresh from his Stage Debut Of The Year Scenie for Monsters Of The American Cinema, once again does remarkable work as a character known only as The Student, whose identity and significance to Anna’s life I will leave it to you to discover.

Jan Monroe’s ingenious scenic design allows us to imagine the Henry Murray Stage as A Good Guy’s various locales, Dan Weingarten lights it to dramatic perfection, and Christopher Moscatiello’s expert sound effects mix adds to the suspense.

Christine Cover Ferro accessorizes Carr’s and Baraka’s costumes to allow quick transitions from character to character, however though I get why Anna’s single outfit makes sense logistically, I did feel a bit sorry for a teacher with seemingly only one dress in her wardrobe.

A Good Guy is produced by Jennifer Sorenson and Guillermo Cienfuegos. Jean Craig is executive producer. Rich Wong is stage manager. Casting is by Victoria Hoffman. Judith Borne is publicist.

From the moment Anna opens A Good Guy with the simple, heartfelt words “I love teaching” to its unexpectedly moving final scene, A Good Guy is guaranteed to hold audiences spellbound. Not only is it one of the year’s finest new plays, it’s also Rogue Machine Theatre at their ripped-from-the-headlines best.

Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.
www.roguemachinetheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
September 15, 2024
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Tags: David Rambo, Los Angeles Theater Review, Matrix Theatre, Rogue Machine Theatre