Bang
by Laura Shaine Cunningham

“Cunningham came up with the idea for this play while researching a story for the New York Times on survivalists, those people who are training and preparing so they can survive the end of the world.

BANG is far from a documentary, however.

Cunningham uses survivalists as the raw material for a preposterous black comedy that highlights one manifestation of our modern madness.”

—Tom Valeo, Chicago Herald“Laura Cunningham’s script tells how a couple of east-coast, neurasthenic, miserable, impotent, boom-generation failures named Len and Sheila Calendar visit their old friend Bev and her new husband Roy in Roy’s underground, nuke-resistant condo in Utah … Naturally Len and Sheila and Roy and Bev get stuck down there together … Cunningham gives us all the predictable reversals, but BANG remains a hilarious analysis of who’s going to join the cockroaches at the end of the world and why.

Hilarity: it’s in the lines, of which I wrote down a great many that I’m not going to read back to you here.

Suffice to say that Cunningham maintains a laugh-per-line radio about equal to Neil Simon’s while remaining true to her situation and her considerable intelligence.”

—Anthony Alder, Reader“BANG is more than a farce, however … Cunningham has created a fantastic reality in her play, but within the nonsense are disturbing ideas that won’t be received by an audience unless delivered through laughter.”

—Chicago Magazine