Bang

A wild black comedy, set underground in a luxury subterranean condominium, designed to withstand nuclear and economic catastrophe. New Yorkers Len and Sheila visit their old friend Bev in her honeymoon home, which happens to be under the Utah desert. Bev has married Roy, a handsome charismatic psychotic, who happens to be an isolationist who has stocked his underground condo with enough DVDs, gourmet meals, and liquor to last 'til the next millennium. They don't need a war to destroy themselves. The two married couples clash and burn as adultery and mayhem erupt. "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