Johnny Got His Gun takes its title from a popular recruiting slogan used by the US military and incorporated into popular songs. The narrator, twenty-year-old Joe Bonham, got his gun and went to war in 1914. An exploding shell in World War I reduced him to a silent life, silent on the outside but not on the inside. Far from home, in a hospital bed in Europe, Joe Bonham is without a voice but ready for battle, ready to explode with rage at what the war left behind. A story about survival and the unyielding and persistent need in all human beings to live with dignity and purpose, Johnny Got His Gun reminds us that behind every casualty of war there is the story of a young person whose hopes, aspirations and dreams have been stolen from them.
Johnny Got His Gun
Reviews
The Gang's Johnny is radical in form and content. Robbins adroitly directs the ensemble with his usual aplomb.
A great deal of intelligence and creativity has gone into this production, utilizing choral elements and highly stylized movement on a bare set. The actors are talented, and the direction is meticulous. It is always interesting. But for me it is rarely emotionally involving. The intensity level ricochets from heightened anguish to manic inspiration to soft elegy, with few shades in between.
Adapted by Bradley Rand Smith and directed by Oscar-winner Tim Robbins, who is also the theater's artistic director, does an incredible job in making the film into a successful play. The message that Trumbo put in is not lost in today's disturbing times. Woodworth does excellent work in portraying the fierce soldier doing his best to survive the hell he's trapped in.
Tim Robbins' riveting rethinking of Johnny Got His Gun is what creating art is truly all about, not fame or fortune or awards, living proof of which surely Mr. Robbins is the ultimate posterchild. Theatrical expression was always a risky artform for anyone with an alternate point of view to attempt, once germinated in public squares and makeshift outdoor stages many centuries ago while warily looking out for the monarch's soldiers poised to take them off to the stocks. That practice lives on at the Actors' Gang with enormous respect and gratitude for the effort going to Robbins.
The latest version is an adaptation by British playwright Bradley Rand Smith which was first done in England a few years ago as a one-man play. Now Tim Robbins, artistic director of Actors' Gang, has added an eight-person chorus to enhance and expand Smith's text. It's a brilliant creative decision.
The Gang's Johnny is radical in form and content. Robbins adroitly directs the ensemble with his usual aplomb.
A great deal of intelligence and creativity has gone into this production, utilizing choral elements and highly stylized movement on a bare set. The actors are talented, and the direction is meticulous. It is always interesting. But for me it is rarely emotionally involving. The intensity level ricochets from heightened anguish to manic inspiration to soft elegy, with few shades in between.
Adapted by Bradley Rand Smith and directed by Oscar-winner Tim Robbins, who is also the theater's artistic director, does an incredible job in making the film into a successful play. The message that Trumbo put in is not lost in today's disturbing times. Woodworth does excellent work in portraying the fierce soldier doing his best to survive the hell he's trapped in.
Tim Robbins' riveting rethinking of Johnny Got His Gun is what creating art is truly all about, not fame or fortune or awards, living proof of which surely Mr. Robbins is the ultimate posterchild. Theatrical expression was always a risky artform for anyone with an alternate point of view to attempt, once germinated in public squares and makeshift outdoor stages many centuries ago while warily looking out for the monarch's soldiers poised to take them off to the stocks. That practice lives on at the Actors' Gang with enormous respect and gratitude for the effort going to Robbins.
The latest version is an adaptation by British playwright Bradley Rand Smith which was first done in England a few years ago as a one-man play. Now Tim Robbins, artistic director of Actors' Gang, has added an eight-person chorus to enhance and expand Smith's text. It's a brilliant creative decision.