A stunning alternate cast provide added incentive to revisit Stephanie Alison Walker’s hot-button, hot-ticket Friends With Guns at The Road on Magnolia.

Not only do Cherish Monique Duke, Kris Frost, Emily Jerez, and Brian Majestic prove every bit the equals of their main-cast counterparts, by casting the roles with quite different looks and types, director Randee Trabitz ensures a fresh new theatergoing experience for return visitors.

Take for instance Walker’s female protagonists, one statuesque, the other petite, but whose height differences get reversed when the alternates perform, thereby causing subtle changes in the dynamic between the two women, particularly when the one plagued by insecurities is the taller of the two.

As for interracial couple Danny and Leah, in the main cast it’s the 2nd-amendment-defending Danny who is African-American and in the alternate it’s his Montana-born-and-raised wife, neither the “obvious” casting route for the roles as written, but choices that add stereotype-defying layers to roles a less imaginative director might automatically have cast as white.

All of this adds up to a return visit made doubly exciting, no matter in which order you see the two casts.

I must confess to remaining unconvinced by the last couple minutes of Walker’s play, but this is a minor quibble.

Regardless of which cast you see, Friends With Guns is still the gut-punchingest play in town.

The Road on Lankershim, 5108 Lankershim Bl., North Hollywood. Through April 14. Sunday at 7:00. Reservations: 818 761-8838
www.roadtheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
April 11, 2019