by Scott Albright
Daily Lobo
There is more to this play than its name implies.
"The Day They Shot John Lennon," written by James McLure and directed by Joann Danella, is not just a play in remembrance of Lennon's death, but a theatrical time capsule of the past to remind us of the political controversies entertainers like Lennon addressed.
Vietnam, Timothy Leary, Kennedy, Pol Pot, Woodstock, racism, masturbation and religion are a few of the subjects this play brings out and into your face. The actors stand amid the audience while they yell, cry and converse over the trials and tribulations of life the day after Lennon was shot and killed in the streets of New York 25 years ago.
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The cast includes Lou Mazzullo and Richard Boehler who play two Vietnam vets; Jennifer Lloyd, Jack Quinn and James Gonzales as three distraught high schoolers; Lori Stewart and Dave McDowell as two Beatles-loving yuppies, Frank DeLillo as an old lonely man; and Kashu Myles as a panhandling hipster.
They all come together because they love the Beatles and feel the need to pay their respects to Lennon. The first hour of the performance moves slowly as the characters establish themselves for who they are. Relationships between the characters grow as the sensitive topics of the day come to surface. The 15-minute intermission comes just in time to save the audience from becoming restless.
The second half of the show intensifies as the characters become more passionate and expressive until they eventually explode into a hodgepodge of commotion. Eventually, the group re-converges in a peaceful manner for the reasons they showed up on that cold city block in the first place - love - which Mike, one of the high schoolers, says he just doesn't understand. Then it's over.
Tears are shed and balanced by comedic relief as the music of the Beatles is played intermittently throughout the performance. The audience changes focus from character to character while the other actors become a subtle part of the background. If they're just sitting there without blinking for minutes at a time or mingling in silence among each other, they play their parts superbly.
Each character tells us what the problem with the world is while speaking his or her mind in relation to Lennon's symbolic history. The cold hard reality of life is exposed to the audience through the minds of the characters who all grasp to the hope of peace and love. Fran tells of how her brother was killed in Vietnam while expressing her dislike of the war at the same time.
The message is to give peace a chance, but the story is about pain and suffering. This play probably won't instigate people to gather in masses as the entertainers of the '60s did, but it will provoke controversial thought because of its parallels to today's political climate.
"The Day They Shot John Lennon" is not for Beatles fans alone. This play will hit the hearts of anyone with an understanding of life's perils. In the end, this play asks, "Why can't we just all get along?"
If Lennon were alive today, he might tell us all we need is love. Perhaps the peace-loving hippie parents of our generation who work for big businesses and money-hungry corporations will give us the answer. Maybe our generation has to find the solution, or maybe it's just a lost cause.
