Review: A GOOD GUY at Rogue Machine At The Matrix Theatre

Bang, bang, bang!

That report you are hearing from the cozy to the point of claustrophobic Henry Murray Stage atop the Matrix Theatre is not just the sound of gunfire, but also the rat-a-tat sting of jagged ideas being aired and challenged. A GOOD GUY, the latest play by David Rambo in its world premiere by Rogue Machine loads its incendiary subject – gun violence in schools – takes steady aim, lets fly and leaves its audience stunned, pensive, and plenty angry. We also leave the theater wary of hearing about the next time somebody discharges a firearm on a real life campus in America. Which, if the statistics are to be believed, will be some day this week. Then the day after.

The “good guy” of Rambo’s is a woman, a middle school math teacher named Anna Pope who has ended a shooting at the school where she teaches by killing the shooter with her own gun. What seems on the surface to be a heroic act becomes problematized as Rambo moves the action backward and forward in time to understand some of the factors leading up to this action, and to its consequences. Unquestionably, the play delves into the bloody legacy that Columbine left us nearly a quarter century ago, but A GOOD GUY is first and foremost an homage to the men and women who make it their life’s ambition to teach, a profession made no less easy by guns. Directed by John Perrin Flynn, the lean and in-your face production makes for a difficult but riveting 75 minutes of theater at the Matrix. Rogue Machine rarely does easy; this one is the stuff of nightmares.

Lights up on Anna (played by Evangeline Edwards), a curly-haired thirtysomething in a sensible dress who is talking about her love of teaching and learning, the former passed on by a favorite teacher from pre-school. Now Anna teaches eighth grade. “It’s really hard,” she says. “The kids are still kids…You really have to fight for their attention.”

Quickly, we learn, she’s not reminiscing out of nostalgia. Anna is being interrogated, by a sympathetic but still business-like detective (Wayne T. Carr) who is collecting details about the carnage that has just unfolded. A preliminary estimate puts the death toll at 11 children and two adults, including the shooter who Anna killed when he entered her room. The shooter was one of her former students, but because he was masked, Anna didn’t know his identity when she emptied her gun into him. In his fact-finding, the detective is diplomatic. He drops his professional guard to let her know that yes, there will be multiple investigations, lawsuits and media attention. “I stopped an insane boy from murdering children,” insists Anna. True, but things aren’t so simple.

Moving back into the past, we hear about a student of Anna’s, Logan Marshall (Logan Leonardo Arditty), who was obsessed with the journals of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold and wrote an 18,000 word essay about Columbine, alienation and violence for his language arts class. Otherwise a terrible student, Logan’s blossoming via this essay prompts the school’s principal (Carr again) to force Anna to tutor him to get his math grades up so he won’t flunk out. Where that same essay’s indicators might have prompted warnings about a potentially dangerous student and crisis intervention, instead it earns Logan an “A” and Anna an unwelcome assignment. “We’re going to help him fulfill his potential,” says the Principal over Anna’s objections. The man’s a doofus, but he has a case. "I don't feel safe," Anna says for the record, even though she has been packing. 

Things continue to devolve. Anna’s husband Michael – who encouraged her to get a firearm in the first place - returns from overseas deployment, a changed man. During her second job at Wal-Mart, Anna re-encounters her beloved pre-school teacher (Suzen Baraka). And we witness the fallout from the school shooting resulting in Anna being treated as anything but the hero/good guy who protected her children. Well, except by the NRA.

Written by a playwright whose family is replete with public school teachers, A GOOD GUY asks us to invest in the nobility of that profession. Even with public education being problematized and compromised at every conceivable turn, that’s not a difficult ask. Edwards’s trustworthiness is the production’s beacon; her rendering of Anna’s dedication not just to teaching, but to protecting, to breaking through – is absolute even as the character starts to fall apart. Apart from one key scene at the play’s conclusion, we never actually witness Anna among her students, but in Edwards’ performance we see a woman who is doing exactly what she was born to do. Rogue Machine regulars who saw this actress’s work as a flinty far right podcaster in HEROES OF THE FOURTH TURNING may not easily recognize her. Baraka and Carr keep plenty busy as the men and women – detectives, fellow teachers, school board administrators, etc. – with whom Anna syncs or clashes.

The company is doing some exciting work in that tiny attic of a space. Some of the visual choices of this production are a bit odd. I get the nearly surrealistic chaos of Jan Munroe’s set design, but the cadaver cutout that runs the entire length of the floor and climbs the wall is a bit on the nose as well as distracting.

The only significant misstep of A GOOD GUY is its ending, a scene containing a twist, a revelation and a reckoning which – for all the hopefulness they convey – ring narratively false. Granted, even teachers can stand to learn a few lessons of their own, but this feel good curtain drop comes across as more than a little contrived.

That said, A GOOD GUY is what Rogue Machine so often delivers: a very good play.

A GOOD GUY plays through Oct. 28 at 7657 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood.

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