Scenes from Other Plays

A Little Night Music

            As Russian roulette is not possible to perform with a muzzle-loaded gun, you can’t use a single shot pistol or even a percussion revolver for this show. You just can’t. It has to be a cartridge revolver (breach-loaded), so the gun would have had to been designed and built after 1875.

Aida – Elton John/Tim Rice Musical

            You might want to go back to the first section and re-read the section on Egyptian fighting. Then you are going to have to toss all of that info aside and just use whatever will make the director happy. Even if you do happen to find a good compromise sword/dagger that looks vaguely Egyptian, you are still stuck with the fact that even the soldiers never wore their weapons, so more compromises need to be made. Since there is no point in trying for historical accuracy in this musical, don’t worry about it. Whatever you pick (Bronze Age, medieval, fantasy) will work fine for this show.

Aida – Verdi Opera

            If this is staged with greater respect for Egyptian culture, this gets much harder to prop, for the same reasons mentioned above. Usually it’s simply easier to go with Greek/Roman weapons and call it a day.

Annie Get Your Gun

            An expensive prop show if done faithfully to the Broadway script, but even if shortcuts are made, start saving your pennies well in advance of mounting this show.

            The historic Annie Oakley used several types of rifles and pistols for her sharpshooting. Her favorite was not a lever-action rifle at all, but a Marlin repeating rifle, .22 caliber. It was the Broadway musical which had her and Frank use lever-actions, so that is what we are used to seeing. [In her song, You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun, there is a reference to her “Remington”, but this is mere songwriter’s license and doesn’t mean that you have to find a Remington rifle for the show. Anyway, there is no specific look to a “Remington” any more than there is to a “Chevrolet”.] There is no doubt that she was a tremendous marksman, perhaps the finest that ever lived. But it should also be noted that for some of the trick shots, especially firing at balloons, some of her rifles were loaded with special cartridges filled with sand instead of a lead bullet. The sand expands in flight and covers a wide area which can easily pop a balloon or even shatter a shot glass, a trick still used in movie westerns. It was also done for some of the specialty numbers of the original Broadway version, but is so dangerous that no theatre would be allowed to do that today. Remember that until recently most guns shot onstage were real weapons loaded with blanks.

            Again, the Broadway tradition has Frank and Annie using lever-action rifles, but simple semi-auto repeaters are also correct. The cost comes not just with the rental cost of each rifle, but the number of firing rifles required for the last scene, where Annie keeps “missing” with each rifle she picks up. So how can you reduce costs for this show?

            1] Have the gun cases open away from the audience’s view, so they never get a chance to see what is inside. That way the same two or three guns can be exchanged yet it can seem as though there are half a dozen inside.

            2] Use cheaper guns. One production went so far as to use revolvers instead of rifles for the shooting match and was able to cut the overall weapons costs to one quarter of what it might have been.

            3] Take a page from the latest Broadway remounting of the show (the “Bernadette Peters version”) and have the drummer do rim-shots instead of having the guns fire at all. I love this alternative, for it eliminates the inevitable headaches from misfiring and jamming guns, eliminates the danger to all the actors on stage, and drops the cost to a tenth or less of what it might ordinarily have been.

            In the earlier scenes, Annie is introduced using her old hunting rifle. As the historic Annie was born in 1860 and started shooting at age 9 (1869), this old gun should be a percussion lock or perhaps even a flintlock rifle. The family couldn’t have afforded a cartridge rifle, and the lever-action hadn’t been invented yet.

            The competition against Frank Butler took place in 1876, when she was sixteen years old. He might have had one of the newfangled lever-action rifles, but they were certainly state of the art machines, and prohibitively expensive for her to have even seen, let alone handled, one. Annie and Frank joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show much later, in 1885, by which time she was a widely recognized expert in shooting any type of firearm.

            Random art note: This show, with one number insulting to Native Americans and the entire script generally demeaning to women, is still popular enough with no sign of it dying away. Modern versions of the show usually try to add a tongue in cheek eye-rolling slant on the final scene so that it is a little less degrading, but as in Taming of A Shrew, you can’t get around the words that are there. But why was the show even written this way? Especially since the historic Annie was a strong, independent woman, and the Wild West Show always treated her as a star of higher rank and respect than any of the other performers.

            Annie Get Your Gun first opened in 1946, just after WWII, at a time when thousands of newly discharged soldiers were returning home to find that most of their pre-wartime jobs had been filled, and competently performed, by women. The War Department applied tremendous pressure to make sure that women relinquished those jobs (or were fired from them) so that the returning veterans would more easily slip back into their civilian roles. To have a show such as this that depicts a woman of accomplishment willingly slide back into subservience was comforting and appealing at the time.

Anything Goes

            There is a great moment when Lord Evelyn Oakleigh rushes on in his nightshirt waiving a “broadsword”. But we’re not talking about a knight-in-armour Excalibur thing. The playwrights were British, and what is required here is from the British definition of broadsword, which is a heavy infantry straight sabre of the 18th and 19th centuries (think American Civil War), not the medieval broadsword.

            The Tommy Gun in a Violin Case. I’m sorry to tell you that a complete Tommy Gun doesn’t fit inside any instrument case, let alone that of a violin. Only the dismantled parts of the weapon were ever transported this way, and even then it had to be the stripped down version with no buttstock and certainly not the distinctive round drum that holds the bullets. The gun would be reassembled once the gangster was in a safe or hidden location, but it was impossible to simply open the case and start using the gun. No, this moment in the show is pure fantasy, so a modified truncated Tommy Gun and a special case will have to be found or built.

Arcadia

            A “rabbit pistol” is called for, but as far as I’ve been able to find out, there is no reference to such an item outside of the world of this play. We can safely assume that it is a small caliber flintlock or percussion lock pistol, but not a fancy heirloom piece. The term is probably similar to the modern “squirrel gun” or “deer rifle”, just an offhand way that the owner of the firearm describes the primary purpose of having the weapon. Someone shooting at rabbits with a pistol is not trying to hunt down dinner, but is just “joy shooting” – the equivalent of playing a video game.

            Also in this play is a reference to a Barlow knife, which is merely a brand name for a popular small folding pocket knife of the period.

Arthur

            see “Camelot”

Assassins

            I am using the caliber descriptions on the guns only for identification purposes, but the fact that we happen to know what the caliber was for a specific weapon shouldn’t dissuade you from using a similar looking gun with a different number. Remember that caliber refers to the internal barrel diameter, so if you find something that looks OK which is 6/100’s of an inch larger than the historical gun no one will ever see the difference.

            John Wilkes Booth        1865     A Philadelphia single-shot Derringer was used to shoot Lincoln, so in the final tableau, and in the opening scene, this should be the gun he holds. He also had with him a good sized Bowie knife that he brandished before jumping. The Two-shot hadn’t been invented at the time of the assassination. It was still twenty years and a completely different firing system away. Booth fired the only shot he had from his blackpowder Philadelphia, then had to fight Major Rathbone (who was sitting in the balcony with Lincoln) using a large knife. During the scuffle, the useless pistol was dropped to the ground, which is why we know what he used. It was recovered and is now in the possession of the National Park Service.

                        Colt 1851 percussion six-shooter, for the shoot-out and suicide in the barn. Booth actually had two revolvers and a carbine rifle with him at the time of his death, but only fired his Colt revolver. Whether he shot himself or was shot by one of the posse was never satisfactorily established.

            Guiteau 1881     British Bulldog .44 cal, silver handled.

There really is no such thing as a silver handle for a gun, and the script describes it as “silver mounted”, an interesting phrase that defies easy explanation, for the term is used for sword hilts but not gun grips. Many assume that the reference is perhaps to a silver or nickel plated gun, but that’s not really the same thing. Be that as it may, the script has it wrong on several counts. After his arrest, Guiteau told reporters that he felt it a shame that he wasn’t able to get a gun with an ivory grip, feeling that the gun would look better when it would be seen by millions in a museum someday. He actually ended up purchasing a plain black version of the gun with a rough wooden grip. [The gun itself no longer exists, but a clear photograph of it is in the Smithsonian archives.]

            Czolgosz          1901     Iver-Johnson .32 cal, owls on the side, black grip.

The owl was the logo of Iver-Johnson Firearms Company, and is set into the pattern of the grip mold. Even when holding the gun in your hand, it is awfully difficult to see the logo. Certainly the audience can never see it. Don’t sweat over this minutia which is completely insignificant. [I hate details like this that are thrown into scripts but provide no benefit to the production.] The Iver-Johnson was a five shot top-breaking revolver, meaning the frame was hinged at the bottom of the frame. This allowed the barrel and chamber to swing down to expose it for loading, just like a break open shotgun.

            IMPORTANT! It can be dangerous to use any firing pistol, stage-safe or real, for Czolgosz if you follow the stage directions and history. Stage guns usually have blocked barrels, which prevent any discharge from flying out of the barrel, and this is the only kind of firing gun that should ever be used onstage. Since Czolgosz is usually standing down center to shoot the invisible McKinley, pointing straight out at the audience, then of course there is no option but to use a gun with a blocked barrel anyway. But he is also supposed to wrap his gun in a handkerchief – it’s how he got it past the receiving line, and it’s mentioned in the lyrics. Guns that fire must vent in some direction, and the guns with plugged barrels generally vent through the side or the top of the gun. If that vent is blocked with a handkerchief, it can easily burn the fabric, starting a fire and/or injuring the actor’s hand. Both events have happened many times in the history of this show. To prevent this, you have three options:

1] go to black-out and have an off-stage gun provide the shot.

2] go to blackout and make sure that Czolgosz completely removes the handkerchief before firing. He doesn’t have much time, and the audience can still see the white fabric during the fade out.

3] use a very well fireproofed handkerchief. Even then only loosely wrap the fabric around the gun. A tight wrap could cause a secondary pressure explosion directed back to the actor’s hand, in a worst-case scenario sending the blast through the actor’s fingers.

            Zangara                        1933     cheap 5-shot .32 cal revolver, does not fire until final scene.

The gun is very similar to the Iver-Johnson above, nickel-plated with black rubber grips, but this gun has an exposed hammer and a different logo on the grip. There is a reason why the gun looks so much like Czolgosz’s. Iver Johnson also made a line of very cheap handguns, made to the same dimensions but of inferior material and looser tolerances. These were marketed under the name “U.S. Revolver Co.”, so as not to hurt the Iver Johnson brand name.

            Ozwald             1963     Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle with scope and .38 cal revolver.

            Just as with Booth, one gun, the rifle, was used for the assassination and another, the revolver, was with him when he was arrested/cornered.

            Sarah Jane Moore         1975     nickel-plated .38 cal Smith & Wesson revolver;  4” barrel length.

            Moore’s gun most likely had the thin grip as shown, but could instead have had a more standard military grip, although it would have made handling and concealing the gun more difficult.

            The same gun is supposed to be able to fire several times (see Fromme below for another option) and also be loadable onstage. That presents some difficulties, since most theatres need to keep the sound down to a manageable level, which means .22 caliber. Those blanks are less than a quarter inch wide, so can easily fumble through the actor’s fingers. You can get blank fire guns that are of larger caliber, but you’ll need to get specially loaded blanks that are quiet enough for actors to use without earplugs. The script asks for something even more difficult, namely that Sarah be able to open the loaded gun and accidentally let the bullets fall out of the chamber and onto the floor. What follows is a very funny bit, but blanks that are of the correct caliber usually stick to the chambers of stage guns pretty well and don’t fall out that easily. Real bullets for real revolvers do, but of course you’re not going to do that. The best way to go with this is to have her palm a handful of dummy bullets and let them drop instead. This is better than dropping the blanks anyway, for the dummy rounds can be much larger and easier for the audience to see what President Ford is doing after he comes into the scene.

            Lynette Squeaky Fromme          1975     Colt semiautomatic .45 cal pistol, model 1911, leg holster.

             Apparently, her gun was a full-sized semiauto, so she is going to have quite a hefty bulk on her leg. She did not use an ankle holster. She wore this on the inside of her left leg at the calf, as FBI photos at her arrest clearly show. It was a regular full-sized holster, and she used several yards of leather tortuously wound around her thigh and lower leg to keep the thing secured.

            [By the way, it was noted that when the police recovered the gun, it had four rounds in the clip but the chamber was empty. Fromme was waiting to fire the gun, but had not worked the action to bring the first round into the chamber. Although she later said that she had purposely kept the chamber empty, it seems that she was unaware of how a semi-automatic pistol works. Had she had a chance to fire the gun, she would have pulled the trigger to no effect.]

            The loudest scene in this musical is the “chicken bucket scene”, where Fromme and Moore nearly empty their guns firing at a cardboard bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. This poses a problem with not just the noise but also the expense of firing that many times and the larger problem of finding a safely firing semi-auto for Fromme. Curtain Call Theatre in Massachusetts came up a brilliant idea that took care of everything. They had Moore and Fromme literally yell out “bang” for each shot, the characters playfully pretending to shoot, Just when the audience is comfortable with the bit, Moore accidentally fires a real shot from her revolver. Both women are shocked, as is the audience. The moment is funny and compelling, and the single shot is much more effective than the multiple rounds that the script calls for.

            Byck                 .22 cal revolver. No specifics that I’ve been able to find. Newspaper accounts of the time only mention that he had stolen the gun from a friend, but we are not told what kind it was.

            Hinckley            22 caliber short-barreled revolver, Rohm RG-14

            In the final scene all of the assassins face the audience and fire simultaneously directly at it. In most theatres that is simply going to be too much sound, so you will need to reduce the number of guns that are actually loaded to just a few of the actors. Also, if any of your guns have open barrels and there is any chance that some of the discharge is going to travel towards your audience, don’t fire those guns. All you need is to have a tiny spark reach someone’s face and you have instant lawsuit.

            In the “gun song”, many directors have the actors dry fire their guns throughout the number. That’s fine, but remember that dry-firing (“clicking”) will sooner rather than later cause the hammer to break off. If you have rented the gun, you’ve just doubled the props cost for the show if even one of the guns break. If you have purchased the gun, you are in for a hefty repair bill. Either way, dry-firing is going to cost you a lot of money.

Batboy; the Musical

            A deer rifle is mentioned, but the character comes in having bagged a couple of geese. Well, he didn’t do it with a rifle unless he’s the next Annie Oakley, and if he did it with a deer rifle there wouldn’t be much goose left. But, what, you’re worried about plausibility in a show called Batboy?

The Bear

            SMIRNOV. [Examining the pistols] You see, there are several sorts of pistols. . . . There are Mortimer pistols, specially made for duels; they fire a percussion-cap. These are Smith and Wesson revolvers, triple action, with extractors. . . . These are excellent pistols. They can’t cost less than ninety rubles the pair. . . .

            These lines get some people a little confused. Smirnov has not brought out any Mortimer pistols. He’s not saying that there are Mortimer pistols in his hands, but that in the world there exist several types of guns. He starts off talking about pistols in general, and tosses out the term in a vain show of knowledge in order to impress the young lady. [A Mortimer pistol was a very distinctive single-shot percussion pistol that was in fact designed only for target shooting, never for duels.] What he has brought out are two identical revolvers.

            The specific guns that we do see are described as being Smith and Wesson and having certain attributes – triple action, and having an integrated ejection rod (“extractors”). Triple action in this case refers to the mechanical-action capability of the hammer and its interplay with the trigger, and the audience is never going to see that. Neither can Smirnov, because it is not something that can be seen. He is either bluffing about his knowledge or he really is a minor expert in guns and their attributes. Be that as it may, the only part of the full description that is visible is the ejection/extractor rod. It’s the part of Western style guns that looks like a thin barrel riding underneath the regular gun barrel, but is actually a push rod that allows the user to push out the spent brass cartridges from the cylinder after the gun is fired. It is a small detail that very few in the audience will know about, so if your prop gun doesn’t have one, I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it. As for them being Smith and Wesson, the company made over a dozen distinct revolvers during this period, and the description in the script gives no indication of what the profile of the gun looks like, so you have a good chance that whatever gun you find will look like one of the Smith and Wesson’s from the turn of the century.

            [In another of his works, a short story that takes place in a gun shop, Chekhov uses the same two gun references. Apparently, he had picked up these two bits of information somehow, and used them in his writing when he had the chance. They seem to be the sum of his gun knowledge.]

Beaux Stratagem

            At one point in the play, Lady Bountiful appears carrying a “pike”, so described in the script. That’s not what the playwright really meant. A pike is a long thin spear, eight to twenty feet in length. Instead, the item needed is a short halberd. (As is usual with the plays of Ken Ludwig, mistakes of history, detail, and nomenclature abound, especially when it comes to weapons.)

Big River

            see Tom Sawyer

Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson

            Whatever the merits of the show itself and/or the political critique it offers concerning American history, one thing should be kept in mind when trying to make sure that the costumes and weapons are correct for the period: don’t bother. Jackson lived in the late 18th and early 19th century, and died in 1837. That is long before cowboys as we recognize them, and before revolvers and breech-loaded rifles were even invented. This is a purposefully silly musical that has no relation to historical accuracy.

Bonnie & Clyde

Both the cops and robbers had remarkably similar items, mainly because the Barrow gang got most of their firearms from thefts from national armories. Both they and the police used automatic rifles, shotguns, and handguns

For the automatic rifles, the only thing used was the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). I have nothing that approaches the look of this weapon.  FYI: Neither side had or ever used Tommy Guns.

For the shotguns, both sides used the Remington Model 11, which was an auto-loading shotgun where the barrel, not the forestock, moves back and forth between shots. The police used full-stock shotguns with long barrels, while the Barrows used sawn-off versions (as shown). I have nothing that approaches the look of this weapon. Neither side used double-barrel, break-open, or pump-action shotguns. (The Texas Ranger Museum falsely displays a pump-action shotgun as one of the Barrow weapons. It is not.)

For the handguns, these were the typical revolvers and semi-automatics of the period.

Book of Days

            A very specific description of one of the two shotguns is in the lines. Ruth let’s us know that it’s a “custom made J. Purdey and Sons, British, side-by-side, engraved full sidelock”. What does all that mean?

            J. Purdey and Sons was a British firm that made shotguns and rifles, and specifically double barreled side-by-side shotguns from about 1890 to 1940. There is nothing particularly distinctive about the shape of a Purdey shotgun, so even a gun collector wouldn’t necessarily spot one immediately. The gun would have internal hammers, rather than exposed, but so do shotguns of several companies. Ruth probably noticed the manufacturer’s mark on the gun frame. Custom made shotguns might have a buttstock specially cut to fit the owner’s arm length and upper body contours, but this could also have been an after-market adjustment. Engraving on a rifle or shotgun is a very expensive addition. And it is true that Purdey shotguns have an especially high value amoung collectors, so her estimate of thirty to fifty thousand dollars is spot on, assuming that the gun is in nearly mint condition.

            So here’s a case where the playwright has done all of his homework and gotten all the details right. Unfortunately, he picked quite an expensive piece to try to replicate for stage. Good luck trying to find a double barrel recessed-hammer shotgun without a trace of rust and with engraving covering the center “box” section (the sideplates). Better perhaps to just find whatever two double barreled shotguns you can and simply polish the heck out of at least one of them.

Brigadoon

            With the exception of anglicized nobles in the 17th and 18th centuries, Scots never wore the sword off of the battlefield, but that won’t stop directors from wanting many in the cast to wear them. And of course you’ll need some swords for the sword dance. But which sword? The unmanageable two handed Claymore or the basket hilt single hand sword of the 17th century? As the time period for this show is fantasy, the weaponry choices for the Highland dance can be anything you want. The costuming suggests using traditional Scottish swords, but I’ve noticed that even modern Highland dancers from Scotland don’t use Scottish swords when they perform or compete. Scottish two-handed broadswords (Claymores) with their very long and broad blades are simply too large to carry or dance over. Single-handed basket hilts swords are more manageable, but the three-dimensional hilts lift one side of the blades up from the floor by a couple of inches. Dancers can easily catch their toes on the raised blades and kick the weapons flying out into the audience. For that reason modern Highlanders tend to use very flat hilted society swords that can lay flat against the floor. I strongly suggest that this is the way to go on this show. Let the non-dancers wear the basket hilts.

            By the way, the dance is traditionally performed with two crossed swords, but there is no reason why it can’t be done with a crossed sword and scabbard.

            The show also needs a knife to be drawn and pointed, and you have a choice in terms of traditional Scottish daggers, but don’t compromise on this. A long bladed dirk with no hand protection was worn at the waist – not the leg. The Scots did have a small knife tucked into the fold of their high wool socks, but this is not a dirk but rather the three inch bladed Skean Dubh. This little thing is just too small to be a credible threat, assuming that the audience can even see it. Don’t try putting the larger dirk on the ankle or in a boot – it just doesn’t work for the style nor the period nor for the comfort of the actor.

Bullshot Crummond

            Just a word here about the sword fight near the end of the play. Naturally, this is a live-action cartoon, so whatever the fight looks like is fine so long as it’s funny. That is the first and last consideration for this play. But if you really feel compelled to add some “historical accuracy” or character delineation to it, read on.

            Otto lets it be known that he studied at Heidelberg (we would have expected nothing less) so that means that he is well versed in that college’s distinctive style of sabre fencing – very different than the style Bullshot would have studied at Cambridge. Crummond would fight in Olympic sabre fencing (very quick snap cuts to the head and thrusts to the body with a very light, flexible and blunt sword while protected with a mask). Von Brunno would be skilled in the Mansuer style (cuts only to the face using a heavier, stiff, and razor-edged sword – and no mask!). Of course, the swords are Otto’s, so they are the heavier style (the schlaeger blade). But, again, why put realism in this show anyway?

            At one point in the fight Bullshot describes a move he has made as a “parry vitesse”, which by the way is not a real fencing term. Roughly translated, he seems to be saying that it was a “quick block” or “parry at speed” (as though one would ever do a slow parry?). More interestingly, he describes this parry that occurred at the end of his own attack sequence, which means that the last move was an attack by Otto, parried by Bullshot. Then Otto asks if he should do an “attack vitesse” (speed attack). Again, no real meaning here. There are ways to choreograph this so that it matches the words and also makes physical sense, but don’t rack your brains too much trying to make sense out of this. The author didn’t so why should you?

Camelot

            Ah, Camelot. That lovely mythic tale about English knighthood. Written from a Victorian perspective. Translated from French-Norman-Renaissance sources. About a post-Roman pre-Saxon king.

            The Arthur legend is a fairytale fantasy, so a “historically accurate” production is both laughable and doomed to failure. It has no relation to any real time period, so you can design it in that Disney/Medieval neo-thirteenth century storybook setting and feel comfortable that that is what the audience expects. The legend has always been popular, and much like the Robin Hood tale keeps gathering the attributes of the people who have taken it close to heart, so it is no coincidence that we see so much of Victorian Romanticism in the present incarnation.

            The true Arthur would have been a Celtic/Briton warrior chieftain, leading a relatively small tribe by his position as the best warrior of the group, not because of his lineage. His fellow warriors would have numbered between a dozen to usually no more than a hundred men. They had horses but no stirrups, and no broadsword and certainly no code of chivalry. But, like so many myths, the name of a strong warrior survived hundreds of years, through the Roman occupation, the Saxon invasions, the imposition of the Dane law, conversion to Christianity, and the Norman Conquest. When the Normans developed their own culture of the sword and spur, romantic tales of early “knights” were created around extant stories of famous warrior kings. That’s why the cast of characters’ names are a mix of French, Anglo and Celtic, and elements of each passing religion get attached to the story, each group adding something to the tale.

            Many moderns enjoy trying to peg the story of the round table and Camelot onto one of several “Artvr”’s that did exist, a mix of Celtic petty chieftains and later Breton/Roman warlords. But these are just flesh and blood markers on which to hang an illusion. [Even trying to find someone with the name Arthur is an error, for Arth is Celtic for bear, a warrior’s sobriquet; a nickname. It was never used as a given name until long after the Saxon domination.] So there can be no “historical accuracy” when trying to design this show. Arthur belongs to the time of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, a fantasy of knights in armor no different from that concocted by Don Quixote’s fevered delirium.

            As for Excalibur, whatever you imagine that sword to be is exactly what it should look like.

Carmen

            The typical firearms for the period are all single-shot muskets and pistols, and it is right during the time when European armies are switching from flintlock to percussion lock, so you can get away with either style. The sidearm is a standard military sabre, but no pistols yet. Pistols were used by irregular units, and were not part of regulation armament.

            For the knife fight, the typical Gypsy weapon would be the Navaja, a single-edged slightly curved folding knife which makes a ratcheting sound on opening. Unfortunately, Navajas are no longer imported into the United States, and no one manufactures them here, so a reasonable alternative is any large folding knife or a medium sized fixed-bladed knife.

            I get a lot of questions concerning which weapons that should be displayed during the March of the Toreadors. While there is no set rule considering what should be presented, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. The sword of the toreador has a slight but sudden bend about five inches from the tip. Not a curve: a bend. This bend allows the toreador to better strike into the bull from above, rather than having the blade skip off its back. But that also means that the sword, called an “estoc” does not have a scabbard. Ever. It simply can’t fit into one. For the same reason, the estoc is never worn. Ever. It is simply presented to the matador when he is ready for the kill.

            Most people believe that the sword is held under the cape for all of those stylish moves of the cape. Not so. What the matador uses to hold the cape out is a two or three foot wooden stick called the muleta. He trades it out for the sword before the moment of the kill.

Carnival

            There is a sword box illusion required for this show. Most theatres won’t have access to a large magic house in order to rent one, so will have to build their own. There is nothing complicated about this illusion, but there are two ways of doing it.

            Version A: The easiest is actually the flashiest. An assistant steps in the box, immediately the swords are thrust in, and then the top and sides of the box are all folded down, showing all of the swords and … the assistant has disappeared! Usually through an escape in the back of the box and then through a curtain, but sometimes through a trap door on the bottom of the box and into an impossibly smaller box on which the sword box is resting. The assistant has to curl up into a tiny ball, convincing the audience that no human could possibly fit inside that minuscule space.

            Version B: Much riskier, but a wonderful illusion when the audience is right on top of or surrounding the action. This time the box is on top of a completely open frame, absolutely no chance of an escape. The assistant steps into the box, the magician says something to her/him, and she/he answers loudly. The swords are thrust into the box, with the assistant still talking from inside the box! The box is spun around, the swords removed, and the assistant steps out, none the worse for wear, and the sides drop down showing that there was no escape possible. This illusion requires very careful planning and quite a bit of glow tape inside the box, for the assistant has to contort into a very specific shape so that the swords will slide through the empty spaces. Each sword goes in in a prescribed order, so that the assistant can press her body against each sword blade in turn to create the next clear space. The glow tape is merely to mark where the first couple of swords are going to go.

Cherry Orchard

            Two guns are shown in Act II, a rifle with a sling for Charlotta and a revolver for Epikhodov. Since the play was written in 1902, and the revolver obviously has to fit easily in a pocket, something like a British Bulldog or really any snub-nose revolver will do. The rifle is a slightly harder choice. Bolt-action rifles were available, but were primarily military weapons. Would this family have one? The common sporting rifles of the time would have been lever-action or simple repeaters.

Clue: the Musical

            The show follows the tradition of using the six weapons of the British boardgame, designed in 1948: candlestick, knife, lead pipe, revolver, rope, and wrench. The problem comes when trying to match the knife and revolver.

            The gun is a “pepperbox” style percussion pistol of 1837, not technically a revolver, but rather a multibarrel pistol. Why the gamemakers decided to use a firearm already over a hundred years old when the board game was invented is beyond me. Even stranger is the choice of knife – a bronze aged dagger (not a knife at all, really) of the style found in ancient Mesopotamia. These two items are not impossible to find, just difficult, as they are not standard items in most props cabinets.

Columbinus

            The four guns used in the high school tragedy are very specific, but remember that you only need to match the profile of the guns. Don’t stress too much about getting the exact brand and model number unless you really want to spend thousands of dollars on the rental.

            a) Savage-Springfield 67H pump-action 12 gauge sawed off shotgun. The key here is “sawed off” and “pump action”. Nothing else is important.

            b) Hi-Point 995 Carbine 9 mm semi-automatic rifle with thirteen 10-round magazines. This one is going to be tougher to find. It’s really a pistol retrofitted with a rifle butt stock, elongated barrel and foregrip to match. 10-round clip’s are fairly short; only about four inches long, so showing one on the gun is not that crucial to the look.

            c) 9 mm  Semi-automatic handgun with one 52-, one 32-, and one 28-round magazine. Two “long” clips (“magazines”), that’s easy. As for the pistol, the main distinguishing feature is that the clip is in front of the trigger. The gun was not specifically identified as being the Intratec TEC-DC9 (Tech-9), but the profile is very similar to it.

            d) 12 gauge Stevens 311D double barreled sawed-off shotgun. This one is a bit odd in that it is a really old-fashioned weapon, basically Grandpa’s old barn shotgun cut-off at the barrel and buttstock. Odd because it is a slow weapon, requiring the shooter to re-load after every two shots. Be that as it may, news reports at the time described the gun as having a 23 inch barrel length, which in no way looks like the photographs of the weapon. Perhaps they meant to say 23 inch overall length, but even then that is too long for what is pictured in the police documents.

Corpse!

            The gun is a revolver, and for this show must be the most reliable you can find, even at the expense of good appearance, for the order of the shots is crucial to the plot. In case of an early misfire, the actor can’t simply try to fire again. One other problem is that the gun must be loaded in plain view of the audience. Unfortunately, that can limit your choices to only large caliber guns using hefty and costly blanks. The more affordable .22 caliber shells are hard for the actor to manage and the audience to see.

            One option, and the stage directions in the script suggest this, is to use a dummy gun to load in front of the audience, and then a twin firing version that is switched out for the appropriate shots. Switching out is difficult, but not impossible. The tough part will be in finding the identical guns. This has become more of a problem in recent years, one that the original production didn’t have to worry about. When the script was written it was fairly common practice to use modified real guns with full chambers.

            For the sword fight, the weapon is described as a sabre. But it is not the military sabre, rather the light Olympic style fencing sabre that is required here. A particularly gruesome effect is called for at the very end of the play, as Powell is exposed, not only impaled on a sword, but also stuck into the cabinet wall. If the Major is already wearing a light harness under his shirt, a dummy sword hilt can be screwed onto the front, and a short length of thick high tension wire (already connected to the wall) can be clipped onto his back. When the cabinet is opened, the Major can lean forward, making the wire taut, and for all the world it looks like the blade has gone through him and he’s now stuck to the wall. He can even gently swing slightly side to side. Creepy.

            But it is the killing of Powell before he is shut up in the cabinet that has actually caused more headaches for several productions. In order to make the last impaled bit work, many choreographers think that the audience needs to see him run through dead center. In order to do that, they need a collapsible sword. They don’t really. All they need to do is position the final run-through so that the actor is in profile at that moment, or better yet in motion so that the run through and the closing of the cabinet can happen in one rushing action. The audience will put two and two together when the cabinet pops open later.

            Actually, I talk about “those” choreographers, but to be honest, I was in that number for many years. I always used a collapsible whenever I choreographed this show. For each production I actually built four swords – two regular swords for the combatants, one duplicate collapsible for the final thrust home, and then a complete hilt with a stubby threaded four-inch bolt where the blade should be that could be screwed into the hidden harness. Since the regular sabres were outfitted with epee blades, a manual extendable car antenna made a great blade for the collapsible. I would work the choreography so that towards the end of the swordfight there would be a brief disarm of Evelyn, his sword going behind a sofa, where the switch to the collapsible could be conveniently made. There were a couple of drawbacks to this. The first is that the car antennae made a very weak blade, so that sword could only be used for a very few moves at the end of the fight, namely some very light deflections of thrusts by Powell. It was certainly far too weak to take even light cuts. Another problem is that the last section of these antennas is very thin and can be easily bent, and once bent, easily broken. So the end had to be carefully pushed in a few inches before the prop was pre-set behind the sofa, and Evelyn had to be very careful during his killing thrust. The last problem is that I was putting my actors in danger. If the antennae should ever have failed during that thrust, the actor playing Powell could have been seriously hurt. Even with that not happening, I still had to make sure that my Powells leaned forward at the moment of the kill, to prevent the tip from skimming off their chests and flying up toward their faces. I am no longer that cavalier with my actors’ safety.

The Country Wife

            Written and set in 1675, a pistol is fired. Ostensibly this is the squire’s gun, but in this period pistols are still quite long and are really only military weapons, the flintlock pistol having just been invented that same year. The earlier pistols were mostly wheellocks, and very expensive, impractical for civilian defense and wildly inaccurate for hunting. The author was obviously keen on getting one of these contraptions in his play, but remember that the pistol was nearly unknown off of the battlefield. Some of the wealthy owned one or two as novelty pieces and for some delusional sense of home protection. [To the audience of the time, this would have had some of the shock value of seeing a modern middle-class homeowner pull out an assault rifle.]  Although some civilians might have had a full-sized rifled musket for hunting, anything shorter lacked a true practical purpose unless one was firing at something only a few yards away.  Even if you should be able to track down a wheellock pistol, feel free to use any flintlock pistol replica for this show, since the real item is so large that it just looks silly to modern audiences.

The Crucible

            In Proctor’s house, scene 2, we see him threaten to whip his servant, but it would be a mistake to think that a conventional whip is the most appropriate item for this show. A farmer in this part of the world would have had no need for the full length whip, which is a tool for cattle drovers. Whether riding a horse or to impel a recalcitrant ox in front of a plow, a very short stock whip, only two or three feet long, with a very broad and flat slapping surface was probably what he would have used. The thin end of a bullwhip breaks the skin and can lead to infection and is very bad animal husbandry. And Proctor is a farmer, not a cattle drover. He mentions that he has just come from plowing, yet he only brings in his “gun”. The whip, whatever kind it is, has been in the house all day. Apparently it was included by the playwright purely as a theatrical device.

            Later in the same scene, he uses a gun to hold off those who come to arrest him. The matchlock musket known as the Spanish musket is the strict historic choice, the later flintlock known as the Brown Bess is a close second, and perhaps even the far earlier arquebus is a possibility. I would suggest staying away from the blunderbuss at all costs. Although it has become something of a Thanksgiving Day icon to see a Pilgrim bearing one of these flared-barreled firearms, it was not used by farmers or hunters (or even by the Pilgrims), and indeed creates an automatic laugh from the audience since it makes Proctor look like Elmer Fudd. Blunderbusses were used rarely in the colonies before the late 1700’s, and none were in the Plymouth area before that time.

            Why does Proctor have his gun with him when he has been plowing all day? Plowing is hard work and requires two arms to control the plow while the oxen drives forward, so where would he put the musket? Are we to think that he wore it on his back while working? Completely impractical. That he left it leaning against a tree while he plowed, ending up hundreds of yards away from it? Then it would be of no use to him in case of an animal attack. No, Proctor returns with the gun because we, the audience, need to believe that the gun might be loaded, which would not be the case if it had been in the house all day.

            But in reality whatever gun Proctor has would of course not have been left loaded, for the powder left in the barrel would attract moisture and quickly corrode the steel. Even walking with a musket can cause the powder and ball to shift away from the ignition point, which is why guns for hunting were loaded only once the quarry was sighted and the hunter could stand, load, and shoot without further traveling. The Spanish matchlock takes about three to four minutes to load and prep the lit fuse before firing, and the later Brown Bess also takes about a minute to load, so anyone seeing Proctor pick up a gun and point it at them would know that it is not a credible threat. Arthur Miller took some artistic license, and who are we to argue. The gun needs to be a flintlock musket.

            No one else needs a gun in this play. Some productions like to have guards standing by with muskets or truncheons in the court scene, but this is not only inaccurate (there was no standing army nor even a constabulary) but it takes away from the powerful and more frightening concept of terrible injustice occurring by the sheer force of public panic rather than force of arms. Even in scene 2, when men come to arrest Proctor, there is no need for guns, for these are his neighbors and friends. The dramatic tension is actually heightened when they are unarmed, for Proctor’s choice becomes a terrible one of becoming a murderer and outlaw or trusting that his town will finally come to his defense.

            In the final scene, we see the prisoners shackled. Just a note here: shackles were difficult and time-consuming to place and remove and the better ones were built with a turn-key and threaded bolt rather than a modern switch-key lock. But key and lock shackles were uncommon, and most were built without a lock at all. They were cold riveted closed by a blacksmith, and you remained shackled until a blacksmith would cut them off. By the way, prisoners were charged for their own shackles and for the cost of food and housing while they were in jail. Even if found innocent of all charges, they still had to remain in jail until all costs were paid for by the family of the prisoner. So when Procter is led off in scene 2, he is worried not only about proving his innocence, but about the very real chance of economic ruin no matter the outcome of the trial.

Cyrano de Bergerac

            The real Hercule Savenion de Cyrano de Bergerac arrived in Paris at the ripe age of sixteen, and died at the age of thirty-one. His personal weapon would have been the cut and thrust rapier and he almost certainly would have used a secondary weapon in the left hand. But the author Rostand specifically describes the attributes of a much lighter weapon – the smallsword of the early 1800’s. The duel in rhyme especially makes reference to moves only used in this later style of swordplay, and trying to make the fight conform to the historically correct sword blade is an unnecessary headache. No mention is ever made of a left handed weapon, and it just feels wrong to have him use one. The very light and quick style of swordplay of the nineteenth century, concentrating on finesse moves of the wrist, will help to show off the dazzling superiority of Cyrano’s swordsmanship far better than will a heavy cut-and-thrust fight of the 1600’s.

            This play, written in the grand emotional romantic style already out of fashion at the time it premiered in 1885, was nonetheless wildly successful. Rostand wrote using the same swashbuckling clichés made popular by Dumas and Sabatini. Audiences did not demand historical accuracy, and it is usually a mistake to try to force it onto a fantasy such as this. Do what is exciting.

            The duel itself is only roughly laid out, but there are some clues as to what the audience might see. Cyrano bates Valvert mercilessly until he can take no more. At “so be it”, it almost seems inescapable that he draws his sword at this time. Cyrano does not, not until he describes the moment in the ballad “then out swords, and to work withal.” Does the fight begin here? There’s no reason why it cannot, with the rest of the lines coming in and around the fight moves. Or some choreographers may choose to delay the crossing of swords until after the first “thrust home”. There is no right or wrong, merely a directorial choice. The only truly specific fencing terms used in the poem are “… beat, pass … ”. To beat means to tap the opponent’s blade to provoke a response or to push it out of the way. Pass is simply a walking (crossing) step forward or back, as opposed to an advance or retreat. Less directly, the line “… note how my point floats, light as the foam…” is suggestive of some very tight point work which eludes Valvert’s attempt to engage Cyrano’s blade with his own.

            It’s easy to forget that there is only one fight shown in the play. Some directors like to put in a staged “fight against the hundred” in between Acts 1 and 2, but this is a grave mistake. Unless you actually have one hundred fighters on stage, the fight becomes ridiculous, the audience obviously seeing that you’re using the same actors over and over. More importantly, a fight that exists in the audience’s imagination will always be superior to whatever can be choreographed, so let the words of Act 2 provide the excitement of what they have not seen.

            The battle scene in Act IV of course does not actually have a battle, although many directors will want to have a Spanish army overrun the stage. When that is the case, it is better to use a heavier blade on the swords that can survive the bigger bashing moves required. You’ll risk a lot of broken blades if you stick with the lighter dueling epee blades.

            The soldiers of Cyrano’s unit are cadets, therefore not full soldiers. Perhaps someday they will be Musketeers, but not yet. It is likely that they have swords but that their primary battle weapon is a pike or halberd. Since for this scene they have been besieged for some time, it can easily be justified that as other soldiers have died, muskets, arquebuses, crossbows, lances, all in various states of disrepair, might have been scrounged together by individual soldiers and all have found their way onto this scene. By the way, the entire concept of a cadet is another anachronism that must be ignored. The term “cadet” has changed over time. Whereas now [and in Rostand’s time] it means a student at a military college [and those didn’t exist in Cyrano’s time], from 1650 to 1775 it meant a younger son of a noble family who entered the military to try and establish a career there. But in Cyrano’s time, cadet merely was the general term for a younger branch of a noble family or specifically the youngest son of a nobleman.

            One last note: Even before the Gerard Depardieu version, many directors and choreographers have had Cyrano win the Act I duel by the end of the poem, but magnanimously not kill Valvert, only to have the horribly embarrassed Valvert try to sneakily run Cyrano through when his back is turned. Cyrano miraculously escapes and in a brilliant counter move, dispatches Valvert, but with regret and almost against his will. Very dramatic and touching, and adds a level of compassion and humanity to Cyrano. This helps directors soften Cyrano’s image as a cold-blooded killer. I have found that this is not because of any squeamishness on the director’s part, for these are usually the same people that want to put in three or four extra fights in the show. No, they make this change out of their belief that a hero would never choose to kill someone unless pushed to extremes.

            This is a lovely thought, but is not supported by the script. That species of compassion is an alien concept to any but those of the mid to late twentieth century. Cyrano does not duel with the meddler because the meddler is of the common class. When the noble-born Valvert challenges him, Cyrano offers him every opportunity to back away from the fight, even while publicly insulting him. But once Valvert draws his sword, it is acknowledged that one or the other will die. Diminish that in any way, and Cyrano is not a man to be feared.

            True Stage Weapon Story: Much like Hamlet, the role of Cyrano is often given to an experienced and mature actor, well versed in souring lyric poetry but sometimes a bit beyond his better years of athleticism. In a production in San Francisco, a very well regarded actor in his sixties tried to recreate the role that gave him local renown when he was in his late thirties. Alas, his earlier performance should have stayed as fond memory, rather than as a cruel point of comparison. The final “as I end the refrain…thrust home!” was usually so off the mark that most nights poor Valvert had to fling himself onto the blade if there was to be any chance of his dying. The effect was less a demonstration of Cyrano’s skill than that of a confused and weary Valvert playing the noble Roman and falling on the sword so as not to embarrass Cyrano. 

Dangerous Liaisons

            [see Les Liaisons Dangereuses]

Deathtrap

            The following is from an e-mail that we received at Weapons of Choice from a harried props master:

       “I’m not sure what you might have in the realm of guns, the prop list called for a Smith and Wesson 38 snubnose with blanks and a Smith and Wesson 38 long barrel with blanks. We also need a dueling pistol, large with a light brown finish. All of these are working models.
       As far as set dressing purposes, the props list calls for a Smith and Wesson 38 long barrel, a German Luger, 5 small antique pistols and 2 muskets.
       For knives, I need a black handled knife and a gold handled dagger, these are “working” props, although obviously I assume that means they fold over or something as to not hurt the actor.
       We also need a curved sword and three knives with sheathes for set dressing.
       We need 2 crossbows (one as cover) three garrotes, (one a “working” model), and a spring plunger crossbow bolt (whatever that is). Also a screw on crossbow bolt and 3 regular crossbow bolts (one used, two dressing.)
       For set dressing, we need a sickle, cleaver, four pair of leg irons, two pair of antique cuffs and a decorated Indian stick with metal rod.”

            It was my great joy to let her know that she needed very few of these things.

            If you are about to do this play you’ve already been confronted with the massive props list in the back of the script (the above e-mail actually referenced only a few of them). Please don’t feel that you have to find all of those items. Remember that that is merely a list in which someone from the original production very carefully notated every item used as either a practical prop or as set dressing. It in no way should be taken as a mandatory list for your show.  Most of it can be ignored – just make sure that the walls are covered with a nice assortment of fun and frightening weapon replicas. Even the practical weapons that the technicians of the original show found may not be what you need for yours. Remember: your job is not to recreate the Broadway version. Your job is to tell the story in the most efficient manner. So your list of practical props may include some very dangerous ones as it is. Stripped down to the basics, here is truly what you need:

•           Two blank-firing guns, and it is helpful if they have different looks, but that could merely be a difference in barrel length. Revolvers are always preferred over semi-autos because of their greater reliability.

•           Trick-release manacles or handcuffs. Only the stage directions refer to them as “Houdini-style”, so if the old style proves hard to find, you can easily switch to the more modern police style.

•           A mock garrote, and a blood effects garrote. There are a few out there, which ooze out fake blood from a reservoir in the handle, but if you can’t find one, you can always have the victim palm a blood pack, reach for his own throat and apply the blood himself. Here’s how, using a real makeshift garrote – that’s right, a real wire. After the wire is wrapped safely around the victim’s neck, let the attacker simply rest his forearms against the victim’s back. The victim can then press forward into the wire as far as he feels comfortable. After two seconds, the victim would naturally grab at his own throat to try and release the wire, right? That’s when he brings up the small blood pack that he has palmed during the “struggle”. There should be plenty of places on the desk to hide it. Once the blood pack pops against the wire, the blood oozes creepily through the victim’s fingers. Very effective.

•           A firing crossbow, which no matter what you do is a ridiculously dangerous weapon. A standard crossbow has a draw strength of about 250 pounds, and even though some theatrical varieties have only a 50 lb. draw strength, the force of the low velocity projectile causes severe damage when it hits soft tissue. Assume that the crossbow can and will fire without warning and so must always and forever be pointed in a safe direction. There are some trick crossbows that don’t fire the bolt [arrow] but instead when the trigger is pulled the bolt drops into a hidden compartment in the stock. If you can find one, use it for your show.

•           A thin bladed knife, a stiletto. Used to jimmy the lock in the desk. This is a pantomime movement, so the knife need not be especially sturdy.

•           A log from the fireplace for hitting over the head. Make it out of foam rubber, not Styrofoam, with a thin wooden core if the director insists on actually hitting the actor on the head, although I hate the idea and think that a clubbing technique as described in the earlier chapter is a better way to go. “I’ve got news for you; Styrofoam hurts.” No kidding; a clubbing to the head can even cause a concussion and minor cerebral bleeding..

•           Likewise, I don’t like using a retractable bolt (arrow) for the stabbing. No retractable item is ever safe, nor is stabbing anything into a “protective” guard placed underneath the costume on the actor’s chest. People have died this way, and for what? For a show?!?. Here’s one way around that. On the plus side, crossbow bolts are fairly short, so hiding the stab is a lot easier than it would be with, say, a medieval dagger. You can always use a blunted regular bolt, and use the attacker’s arm as the “collapsible”. It’s a magician’s trick, hiding the sliding bolt from the audience’s view. Here’s how: holding the bolt with the downstage hand so that at least half of it is showing, the stab is done straight in, allowing the bolt to actually strike the victim. The attacker’s hand is kept very loose, which allows the bolt to slide up the forearm, hidden from audience view. The attacker’s hand can slide all the way up to the victim’s chest. With a little practice, you can even do a quick “relax and grab” during the pull out. The bolt floats in air for a second as the hand withdraws slightly, and grabs the bolt at the original position. It can look great even in close up, so long as the forearm covers the bolt at the moment of the stab.

•           A bolt (crossbow arrow) that somehow can be stuck into Clifford. The simplest is to have him wear a strap underneath his shirt that has a threaded nut built into it, and a bolt with a matching threaded end. He can simply screw in the bolt before coming back on stage. Make sure that this fake bolt is a bit shorter than the real bolt fired from the crossbow.

Desert Song

            French Foreign Legion (actually Spanish, but we shouldn’t quibble), therefore the soldier’s weapon is the bolt-action rifle.

Diary of Ann Frank

            At the final scene, “Nazi’s” come to arrest the Van Dams and the Franks, and history gives us some specifics here. One uniformed German SS sergeant and three (sometimes four) Dutch security police in plainclothes would have been a standard detail dispatched for the action. The weapons they carry should match the way they are costumed. There would be no German soldiers in the group, so no rifles. A traditional German officer would have a pistol – a Luger or Walther semi-automatic. While it’s possible that uniformed or non-uniformed Dutch collaborators might have the same, it is far more likely that they would have generic revolvers with 4” barrels. The security forces of German allies were usually given older guns, the newer and more highly-powered weapons going to German frontline troops.

Escanaba in Da Moonlight

            This play and the prequel, Escanaba in Love, deal with deer hunters of the Upper Peninsula area of Michigan. Their weapons could be bolt-action rifles, pump shotguns, semi-automatic rifles, or large-caliber lever-action rifles (listed in decreasing order of popularity).

            The script specifically makes mention of a “Remington 250”, which is a .22 caliber cartridge, not the rifle. Normally, this would be used in a Remington 700 rifle, which is what we see in the movie.  Although it has some acceptance amoung hunters, the use of a rifle of such small caliber but high velocity has a serious drawback for large game. In the hands of a hunter of average skill, it is likely to cause a painful wound rather than a quick kill. It is a squirrel rifle, not a deer gun. But we are stuck with it since the script is so specific.

            The script also mentions a “30-30”, again a cartridge size not a rifle description. The most likely rifle to use such a bullet cartridge is a lever-action. In the movie, Jeff Daniels has a Winchester lever-action.

            I made a grievous error in the first edition and wrote that shotguns would not be used. I was completely wrong. Although rifles are far more accurate and allow for kills of between 300 to 600 yards away, many hunters fire only within 100 yards, so a single large slug from a shotgun can accurately and effectively bring down the quarry at such short distances.

Eugene Onegin

            The opera was written in 1879 by Tchaikovsky, but from a Pushkin lyric poem of 1833. Costume settings for the opera therefore tend to be set in either of these two times, and that will affect the choice of the pistols for the duel. Those that are set in 1833 need to use single-shot pistols, but those set in 1879 can get away with revolvers.

Evita

            Rifles and pistols pop up in several scenes. Although Argentina produced most of its own armaments, the styles follow the same pattern as weapons found throughout Europe and the US, although usually a generation behind. Rifles for this period would be bolt-actions very similar to the bolt-action German Mauser, while pistols cover all of the styles found during the mid-20th century.

 *         Random art note: Every single production that I have seen, including the original, gets the dancers’ and tango singer’s costumes wrong, putting them in a sort of ruffled sleeved conga/rumba/flamenco outfit and dancing some Cuban/Brazilian thing. It also doesn’t help that the song he sings is not a tango. These are not trivial issues for this show, as it shows Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lack of understanding of what the Argentinians felt was their isolation in the twentieth century, a feeling that allowed a charismatic figure like Peron to sweep into power.

            Argentina created the tango, but only for the citizens of the capitol city, Buenos Aires. It was they who danced the tango, who sang the tango, who lived the tango. Almost always in a minor key, with a driving 4/4 beat that pulls the dancers along in an eight step march to a relentless and bitter destiny. The dance itself is not rigid: both the dancers and musicians are free to improvise in a fruitless effort at breaking away from the coming downbeat. The dancers especially try to create a sanctuary within their dance, the man choreographing, the woman improvising, ever searching for a place of safety, of escape, of something in the midst of their passionate embrace that can save them from the darkness in which they live. The closeness of their bodies becomes a desperate attempt to create a single entity, a vain attempt to create something stronger than either one alone, something that can overpower life, overpower the night, overpower death. But even as they try to sustain the intimacy of a pause, to brighten the moment with a flourish, the music plunges them back into the painful reality of a world cruel and uncaring. It is the music of people trapped in the poverty of a large city, and even the happy tangos carry an undercurrent of loss and melancholy, of disenfranchisement. Here is no joyous celebration of life as one finds in the music of Brazil or the Caribbean, and the male tango dancers and singers would only wear the uniform of the city, the two piece suit made for prowling the streets at night looking for solace. These are people who feel that they are lost Europeans, living thousands of miles away from civilization, surrounded by a vast continent that they would rather ignore than embrace. Buenos Aires was and still is an island unto itself.

The Fantastics

            Make sure that the properties master and the director are on the same page as to what sword you want. There have been so many times at our rental company where we’ll get an order for one type of sword, only to get another call one a week later when they find out it won’t fit in the trunk. Seems silly to have to remind people of this, but there you are.

Fiddler on the Roof

            The show is set in 1905, so the rifles carried by the Russians, if any, should be bolt action rifles similar in style to the Mausers of WWI. No one in this play, even the police chief, needs a sword. Although he would more than likely go through his daily routine unarmed, it is not unreasonable to costume him with a pistol.

Forza Del Destino

            This opera calls for a gun to be thrown to the floor, which then fires and kills the Marquis. First problem: no gun, real nor replica, can survive being dropped to the floor. This is especially the case for the single shot pistols of the 18th century, because the hammer is very exposed and most of the frame is wood. Second problem: No gun can be made to fire reliably when dropped to the ground. Yes, it can happen, but the gun has to turn in such a way so that the hammer would hit the ground first, with the force being directed forward, not back or sideways or down, and even then it’s hardly a sure thing. Third problem: the drop has to be controlled so that the barrel is pointing directly at the Marquis when it hits the ground. If that doesn’t happen, the audience laughs because it is so obvious that he couldn’t have been shot.

            What to do? First, buy a bunch of very cheap replica pistols, because most are going to break. Better yet, build them yourself completely out of steel and paint them to look like wood. If you buy very expensive sturdy guns, you’re just throwing money away, because no gun is sturdy enough to be repeated dropped. Second, use an offstage sound for the gunshot. There is no safe way to get the gun to fire on impact, and absolutely no way to create a safe discharge down the barrel of such a thing. Third, practice that drop so that the barrel always ends up pointing exactly where you want. Good luck.

God’s Country

            Some very specific automatic weapons are mentioned in the props list, but not in the lines of the play, so all you need are some very scary modern assault weapons. The problem comes in the scene where we are supposed to see a gun rather expertly dismantled and reassembled in the process of cleaning it. There is nothing easy about this, no matter what gun or replica you get. I’ve seen actors blow this and accidentally send springs and parts flying across the stage (one time into the audience). You’ll need to rent a (costly) real rifle that has been made safe for theatre, and then get expert training for your actor. Expert.

Grapes of Wrath

            In the latest stage version, Tom disarms a deputy sheriff who has accidentally shot a woman in a crowd. The gun is described in the stage directions as being a semiautomatic pistol, and that Tom removes the clip and then chambers out the remaining round. Please don’t feel that slavish adherence to the stage directions is necessary or even wise. For one thing, having a deputy carrying a semi-auto in the 1930’s is as likely as having a modern officer driving his patrol in a Masserati. On a practical level, you may have read elsewhere in this book that semi-auto’s are notoriously unreliable as well as too loud for most theatres. So go ahead and change the pistol to a revolver. Tom can still open the gun and empty it of its “bullets”, so the intention of the moment need not be lost. And don’t let the gun drop to the ground. It will break.

Guys and Dolls

            In the bar fight in Havana, a bottle breaking over the head is included in the stage directions. If you decide to include it in your fight, you might want to consider not using a breakaway bottle. Instead, try having a pre-broken bottle hidden among the other bottles on the shelf. By grabbing that one and quickly going into the swing, the audience will never be able to see what the actor has in his hand until just after the bottle smashing bit. The sound of the glass breaking can come from a crash box off stage or behind the bar. You’ll save a bit of money and keep the stage safer for both actors and audience.

Hedda Gabler

This play, especially when performed in the US, often gets the pistols wrong. The biggest reason for that is our immediate assumption that a pair of pistols must mean dueling pistols. So let’s clear up some terms.

Dueling with pistols began in 1711, blossomed after 1780, and then slowly dissipated into oblivion by 1880. With the exception of the American West and South, dueling was strictly performed with single-shot muzzle-loading pistols. Even after reliable multi-shot revolvers were invented after the mid 1840’s, duels of “honor” continued to be conducted with single-shot pistols, so that the entire affair would not turn into a bloodbath. One shot each, thank you very much, and if both participants miss, everyone goes home healthy.

Pairs of single-shot pistols, in a custom case, were often prized purchases, even if one had no intention of ever actually dueling. Civilian men of means would buy them to increase their sense of manliness, and gun sellers found that they could easily persuade a potential gun buyer to purchase two rather than one handgun. The wealthier the client, the easier the sale.

Military pistols are another matter altogether. Often presented as gifts to higher ranking officers, they were generally the best examples of whatever was the common practical firearm of the time. In the single-shot era (approx. 1700 to 1850), it was sometimes a brace (pair) of pistols, but more commonly just one very nicely engraved piece.

            The play is set in 1890. We can consider her age to be around 20, (any older and at the turn of the century we are talking serious spinster). For him to have purchased a matched set of single shot dueling pistols during the 1840’s, even if we was only 20 himself at the time, he would have to be 70 now, and have fathered Hedda when he was about 50. Of course possible, but we’re kind of pushing it. Shave twenty years from his age, and the guns would have been purchased between 1860 and 1880. So no matter what, these are revolvers, not single-shot pistols.

Certainly by the time Hedda’s father became an officer (let alone a general) single-shot pistols were long forgotten relics, militarily speaking. So what he had were revolvers. And we know something else: they were purchased after 1878.

[HEDDA, dressed to receive callers, is alone in the room. She stands by the open glass door, loading a revolver.  The fellow to it lies in an open pistol-case on the writing-table.]

So … the playwright calls them revolvers.

[She goes to the writing-table and opens the drawer and the pistol-case; then returns to LOVBORG with one of the pistols.]

So … they can’t be percussion (blackpowder) revolvers, because you can’t simply leave blackpowder weapons loaded in a drawer. Blackpowder draws in ambient moisture – the powder would lose its potency, the inside of the chambers would rust in a matter of hours, and the gun would be ruined from corrosion in a matter of a few days. And she doesn’t give him percussion caps, blackpowder and wadding needed for a percussion revolver. No, these guns are loaded. And if stored loaded, they are modern-style cartridge revolvers.

Brock – “She will have to explain how the thing happened—whether it was an accidental shot or murder. Did the pistol go off as he was trying to take it out of his pocket, to threaten her with?“

Single action revolvers of the early 1870’s can’t accidentally fire by pulling the trigger. The trigger doesn’t work unless and until the hammer is pulled back first. Two separate actions: so no accidental firing when pulling it out of a pocket. Brock would not even mention that scenario unless he knew that the gun was double-action.

Everything here makes it clear that the only possible weapons for this show are a pair of double-action revolvers, commonly found throughout Europe by 1878. Were they military pistols? Possible, but not terribly likely. Military firearms tended to be large caliber: great stopping power with a single shot, but man, what a kick from the recoil! Also, the huge amount of sound doesn’t make for a pleasant experience in the days when recreational shooting was done without earmuffs. And larger caliber ammunition is more expensive than smaller caliber, If Hedda and her father could pass the time away firing off several dozen rounds at a time, it was most likely with a pair of .22 or .32 caliber revolvers.

I Hate Hamlet

            The fight between Barrymore and Andrew can and should be as elaborate as you can imagine, and this is a great chance to throw in every movie swordfight cliché ever seen. Barrymore is, after all, not only provoking Andrew into fighting but also teaching him how to be a swashbuckler. Jumping over the sword, slicing the candle on the mantle, going body-to-body for the dramatic lines, as well as every cheap sight gag in the book should be in this fight.

            The swords are Barrymore’s of course, and as such are either his own practice fencing weapons or theatre/movie props from one of his shows or films. No matter which, the blades should be light fencing weight, such as the epee, for movie swordplay in Barrymore’s time was based on Olympic fencing (even the “broadsword” fights were elaborate versions of sport fencing).

Huck Finn

            see Tom Sawyer

Into the Woods

            The two princes are usually costumed wearing swords, and there are two ways to go with these, depending on how they are going to be costumed. Believe it or not, there are two fairy tale traditions from which to choose, and the best way to visualize these is to look to the Disney animated classics for examples. If the look is “medieval fairy tale” such as Sleeping Beauty, then a very light version of a straight edged broadsword would be the right sword to use. If the look is more “folk fairy tale” like Cinderella, then one should go with gently curved sabres.

Jekyll and Hyde

            The novella was written in 1886. There is a gun in the play, and in the novel it is merely described as an “old” gun. So, how many years before 1886 is “old”? Well, the first practical cartridge revolvers are developed in the mid-1870’s, only ten years before this story. Therefore it is not unreasonable to infer that he is referring to a blackpowder percussion revolver, a ball and cap six-shooter.

            A sword cane is called for, and this poses a problem for the many states in which such weapons are illegal. In those cases, I’m afraid the only remedy is to try to build one yourself.

            For the throat slitting, I always advise against using a blood effects knife. Better to go with a preset blood pot and have the actor apply the blood exactly when needed (see the stage combat section, page 390, for a couple of ideas).

Kentucky Cycle

            What a prop and costume budgeting nightmare! To do the show right will take several thousand dollars to provide all of the period specific items called for. On the other hand, there is some doubling that you can do without breaking historical accuracy.

            From 1775 to 1860, the United States Department of War didn’t spend much on new weaponry. The same flintlock rifles that worked fine for the revolution were used for the War of 1812. Even during the first years of the Civil War, large quantities of these same flintlock muskets were simply retrofitted with percussion locks and put into use until the newly built percussion rifles could be shipped out to the troops. Be that as it may, you should probably use percussion lock muskets by the time you get to God’s Great Supper (play 5).

            So it is in the first half of the play that you can save the most money. In the second half, gun evolution progresses too quickly to allow for any doubling.

The King and I

            Directors often want “palace guards” to wear elaborate scimitars. Sorry, wrong continent, but for this fluff musical you can probably get away with it. This show, and the book from which it is derived, strays so far from historical accuracy that you should feel free to put in just about anything that enters your imagination. (Traditionally, warriors in Siam would have had short spears, not swords, and there doesn’t seem to be an indication that there was a standing unit of palace guards or royal bodyguards. Certainly by the time of this play, soldiers would have had percussion muskets. Muskets were part of the Siamese armament from the late sixteenth century.)

Laura

            The show requires a walking cane, which is also a firearm. (“He gives his stick a sudden twist, removes the bottom part. The rest is a gun. ‘You see, it has a short barrel. It has, in effect, the same spread as a sawed-off shotgun.’ ”) For something to have a “spread” it means that it is firing multiple pellets from a single cartridge, not a single bullet. So the gun/cane is loaded with a shotgun shell, although the barrel width could be that of any regular pistol. Shotshells made so that they can fit into regular short barrel guns are common, and actually come in many calibers. The cane itself would look like an ordinary cane, except for a recessed trigger that would only pop out when the gun is disengaged from the rest of the cane. All of this means that you can use any walking cane that can come apart easily enough and then look as though it has a hollow barrel. It helps if it has a shaped handle rather than being a simple walking stick.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses        

            Taking place in the mid 1780’s, the fighting style of the duel in the penultimate scene should be in the smallsword style – truly the pinnacle of single weapon dueling complexity.

            In the stage directions for Act 2, scene 8, it calls for a case for the “rapiers” to be carried out for the duel held on the misty open field. But such a case doesn’t exist in history, at least not during or before the 18th century. More manageable would be a plush fabric bag, something similar to the soft carriers used to transport silverware.  Build a case if you wish, but definitely use smallswords, not rapiers. So why is there mention of a case? Probably for the same reason that Christopher Hampton mentions rapiers, which no longer are used in the time setting of the show. What I believe has happened is that the playwright may have come across the phrase “case of rapiers”, which actually refers to two rapiers, built as a matched pair, to be sheathed in one scabbard but used one in each hand, for true two-handed fighting. In time the term became corrupted to mean any pair of matching swords. It has nothing to do with a container to put swords into, which in any case was not ever done for smallswords, but there you are. These kinds of errors abound in literature.

            After Danceny’s first line, the stage directions refer to “this breach of etiquette”. The conceit here is that it is understood among gentlemen that the combatants would not speak to each other before the duel, and that all concerns are handled through the seconds. This, again, is an invention by the playwright.

            After Valmont’s response, the stage directions have him lay his sword on the ground while he removes his coat and puts on his glove. No one who owns a sword would ever lay it on the ground, especially on a “misty December morning”. The dew from the grass is an invitation to rust, which can ruin the blade. Why did he not just lay the sword back on the case or have Azolan hold it for a moment? Who knows, except that that’s what happened in the London performance, and the stage manager dutifully noted all of the action in the script that later went to the publisher. The script by Christopher Hamton as published by Samuel French is one of those unfortunate examples of every frown and glance performed by the original cast having been faithfully entered into the published script – to the detriment of all future actors and directors trying to create their own production. (If such line readings and trivial specific actions had been included in Shakespeare’s time, his work might not have survived past his lifetime.)

            By contrast, for the specific moments of interest in the fight, at first reading there seems to be interesting stage directions concerning this duel. But a closer reading offers no true description of the fight itself, for there are no directions, just a vague emotional description that reads more like a novel than a script. The choreographer is supposed to translate “some piece of inattention very close to carelessness” into a series of moves that the audience can follow and comprehend. Simple in a film, but way too subtle for stage. And it explains nothing. Is he merely distracted? Does Danceny win the fight due to his skill? Why is it necessary for Valmont to be wounded in the middle of the fight? Does it change him?

            The original source material gives us no help at all, for in the epistolary novel written in 1787 there is no description whatsoever of the duel. In a letter, we merely learn that a duel has occurred and that Valmont has died from two wounds suffered therein.

            Make the fight your own, as you would for Romeo & Juliet. Tell a story. Let the audience see a change in Valmont, one that commits him to a path that leads to his death. If the audience doesn’t see the change and understand why he does what he does, the fight is a useless delay to the end of the show.

            If you should decide to have Valmont wounded in the middle of the fight, there is a break in the action in which the script says that he and Azolan have a “murmured consultation”, after which the fight resumes. What are they talking about?

            Part of the duty of the seconds is to ensure that protocol is maintained and that honor is satisfied. One common understanding is that he who draws first blood can be considered to have won the duel. Valmont could simply walk away here and both men would have their honor intact. That Valmont returns to fight means that merely drawing blood will no longer suffice to finish this duel. If he wounds Danceny now, it is meaningless. No, Valmont has committed both men now to fight a duel to the death. One or the other must be carried off the field.

Les Miserables

THE PROPS

Joubert’s Sword – A sabre as a side arm for a military man is standard, but a gendarme officer in full uniform would wear one as well. Having said that, full dress uniforms would only be worn for ceremonial occasions. Civilians at this time have given up the sword as an item of dress. So there is really no point in this play at which Joubert would be wearing his sword. But it’s in the script, so what can you do? Joubert’s position is not of the highest rank, so historically his sabre would have been heavy-bladed. But we can grant a little license here and provide him with a thin-bladed (therefore much lighter) weapon if you choose.

Guns – Firearms used by the citizenry at the barricade would be a mix of whatever they could lay their hands on. So it is reasonable to see a variety of percussion lock and flintlock muskets and even some single-shot pistols. The percussion firing system for both pistols and muskets had just been brought into limited manufacture. While available to anyone willing to purchase them, most armies had not yet begun to shift over from their stock of flintlocks. [As the first revolvers are just being invented, it is unlikely that anyone in this scene on either side would have seen, let alone had access to, such a cutting edge item. So only single-shot firearms should be used.]

THE ACTION – At The Barricade

            (A note to the director: actors, especially young ones, love to die dramatically. They also have an unfortunate tendency to use their prop firearms to break their falls, thereby shattering the guns in the process. Remind them that when guns are destroyed, so is most of the budget for the show. Be sure and set aside a portion of one rehearsal to teach them how to fall without trashing the guns … or themselves.)

            The scene at the barricade is set in 1835, so the choice of weapons allows for a little flexibility, but the standards for the period should be maintained. A dress sabre as a side arm for a military officers is standard, and a gendarme officer in full uniform would wear one as well. But then again, full dress uniform would only be worn for ceremonial occasions, and the corresponding sword (a heavy, curved sabre) would be dress, not practical. A practical sword would only be worn under battlefield conditions. The mounted and foot soldiers of the gendarme would have a heavy sabre.

            The point is moot, however, as Javert is not a mounted or foot gendarme, but a police inspector. The civic police were part of the military structure (technically still gendarmes) but they had no military duties. Although he would have a thin-bladed court sword (again, worn for certain ceremonial duties) he would not wear it while actually at work. So there is really no point in this play at which Javert should realistically be wearing his dress sword. But Victor Hugo has him wearing a sword in inappropriate circumstances, so there we are.

            The firearms used by the citizenry at the barricade would be a mix of whatever they could lay their hands on. So it is reasonable to see a variety of percussion lock and flintlock muskets and even some single shot pistols. As the first revolvers are just being developed, it is unlikely that anyone in this scene on either side would have access to such a cutting edge item, so only single shot firearms should be used. The percussion firing system for both pistols and muskets had also just been brought into limited manufacture, and even most armies had not yet begun to shift over from their stock of flintlocks.

            The action at the barricade is fairly well described in the script and the libretto, but is quite different from what happens in the Victor Hugo book. So enjoy the book as a research tool to bring nuance to the characters, but remember that our job is to bring life to the script as we find it. Both the novel and the script describe fights similar in tone, but not in specific actions. The script directions refer to some complicated manoeuvering on the other side, and if the actors are agreed as to what is happening offstage it just might help the audience as well. So some background: the soldiers are trained to be able to fire and reload their muskets within 16 seconds. The citizens at the barricades, even if some of them have had military experience, will need from 30 to 45 seconds between shots. Why? The soldiers all have identical muskets and are carrying pre-measured cartridges to allow for quick loading. The citizens have a variety of weapons, non-standard bullets, no training for battlefield conditions, and gunpowder brought loose in pouches or bags. And some of them will never have fired or loaded a gun before, so it might take them much longer to get off a second shot.

            Even knowing this, the officer in charge on the other side made an early, critical mistake. At the first sign of the barricade going up, the soldiers should have rushed the position in a bayonet charge. At a full run from even 80 yards away, they would realistically have faced only one round of largely ineffective gunfire from the unorganized insurgents. The citizens would not have had time to reload before the soldiers would have been on top of them. The soldiers could then have fired once at close range, and then quickly disperse and dispatch the remaining rebels with bayonets. [Artillery and grenades were available to the army, and several attacks from a cannon are vividly described in detail in the novel. But again, not in the script, so we are going to assume for our purposes that a decision was made not to use them in a densely populated urban environment].

            Instead, the officer treats the situation as the taking of a fort. He sends in a small company of sappers protected by a small company of infantrymen. Sappers were the engineers of the army, specialized in tunneling under enemy walls and in setting explosives. Whatever the sappers have planned for this situation, they are carrying tools instead of firearms, and that’s why the infantrymen are accompanying them.

            The citizens fire, and although their light sporting arms are underpowered compared to the soldiers’ muskets, they are very accurate, and most of the bullets can find their targets at these limited ranges. Although the infantry try to provide covering return fire, they and the sappers take too many casualties and must retreat. The troopers’ smoothbore firearms are very powerful, but these soldiers are not marksmen, and if they are more than 50 yards away cannot expect to hit a single man standing in an open field, let alone semi-hidden figures behind a barricade.

            But there are a company of soldiers who are trained to do just that. Fusiliers, armed with rifle-barreled muskets even more accurate than the citizens’ sporting rifles, can act as snipers in such situations, taking positions from windows and rooftops up to 200 yards away. So a little later, when the bullets start coming from a strange angle and landing inside the supposedly safe area behind the barricade, everyone rightfully panics. It is Valjean’s coolness under fire that allows him to be able to evaluate the situation, spot the sniper, and use his own excellent return fire to kill him.

            But the eventual outcome of this situation was a foregone conclusion as soon as the barricade was constructed. The army, with nearly unlimited replacements and supplies, moves in closer and closer with every engagement, and soon the shear volume of fire from the regular infantry compensates for accuracy. For the young revolutionaries, the heady optimism of romantic ignorance is replaced by cold deadly reality.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore

            The most dangerous part of this very dark comedy is in the carnage inflicted by the various characters but with the air rifle that Mairead must fire onstage. If you must have the sound come out of the gun rather than a sound effect, you have no option but to purchase an air rifle and fire it.  An air rifle (pellet gun, BB gun) has an open barrel, and if anything accidentally gets in the barrel (a splinter, a pebble) it is going to shoot out of the gun just as a BB or pellet would, with the same potential for injury to the other actor.

Lion in Winter

            Even the nobility in the middle ages would never wear their swords unless actually approaching a field of battle, but this play specifically has several characters wearing their broadswords, so we go with it. Henry actually uses (draws and raises) his sword at the end of the play, and in most productions it strikes the ground or is even thrown across the set, so get the sturdiest sword you can find. The biggest concern here is not the quality of the blade, but the weight of the pommel – any pommel. When it strikes the ground the thin threaded tang of the blade can easily shear off, ruining your sword.

            A great line in the play refers to the fact that everyone wore a dagger in the Middle Ages, and if we include general purpose utility knives, that is very true. Daggers were also fairly large, but remember that in the dungeon scene you need to hide those knives in a covered tray or platter, so depending on the tray size, you may need a second set of smaller knives for this scene, or perhaps choose smaller daggers for the earlier scenes. Or get a big platter.

A Little Night Music

            As this show is set during the turn of the century, the only appropriate guns should be revolvers, not single shot dueling pistols. (After all, how can you challenge someone to Russian Roulette with a single shot pistol?)

Little Women

            Even though some swords are called for when the sisters put on their amateur theatrical, we have from the text of the novel a very clear idea as to the nature of the props used.

“ Being still too young to go often to the theater, and not rich enough to afford any great outlay for private performances, the girls put their wits to work, and necessity being the mother of invention, made whatever they needed. Very clever were some of their productions, pasteboard guitars, antique lamps made of old-fashioned butter boats covered with silver paper, gorgeous robes of old cotton, glittering with tin spangles from a pickle factory, and armor covered with the same useful diamond shaped bits left in sheets when the lids of preserve pots were cut out … .Jo played male parts to her heart’s content and took immense satisfaction in a pair of russet leather boots given her by a friend, who knew a lady who knew an actor. These boots, an old foil, and a slashed doublet once used by an artist for some picture, were Jo’s chief treasures and appeared on all occasions.”

            So at best, there should be one old foil, and then whatever else the girls would have found or built (fireplace poker, sticks, what have you).

            As the musical version actually has the stories come to life, actual swords should of course be used, but keep in mind that these are still fairy tale recreations, filtered through Jo’s 1800’s sensibilities. These fantasy swords should be very light and no more than three feet long, more presentation than practical.

Lovers and Executioners

            Written in 1667-68, the sword used would be the transitional rapier, still a cut and thrust weapon, so a heavier blade than modern fencing weapons. The use of a weapon in the non-dominant hand has passed, so parries are done with the attacking sword. The true riposte is born in this period.

            The American translation of this French play has one troublesome phrase in the middle of one of the comic duels. Constance: “What was that move?”  Don Lope: “A fully extended, left-lead passado”. The phrase has no specific definition, so we have to break it down and provide our own. Passado meant simply a forward passing step, but with time has come to mean a forward passing step combined with a thrust. If we use the more modern definition, a left-lead passado seems to mean that Don Lope was standing with his right foot forward and presumably with the sword in his right hand. He then passed his left foot forward while thrusting. That part is fairly clear, but what about the “fully-extended” part? Try fully extending either leg and see which one you like best. If you straighten (extend) the right (trailing) leg, you get a nice opposite lunge – a very strong look. But if instead you straighten the left (leading) leg, you get a solid attack that still keeps the torso back and away from danger. It is also a wonderfully foppish look, especially if you allow the torso to lean back and the left hand to rise above the head. Very silly, which is why I love to use it in shows like this.

Lucia Di Lammermoor

            This opera is set vaguely in the latter part of the 17th century. The Walter Scott novel on which it is based combined some factual incidents from 1669 and 1683, but Donizetti leaves the specific date open. Either way it leaves us with two choices to make concerning the swords that your cast will wear. We’re right in the middle of a transition period for the civilian sword: the bulky rapier is considered something of a dinosaur but the ultra lean smallsword has not yet become common, even among the high nobility. Generally speaking, older users would tend to stick with the sword of their youth. To that add the distinctly Scottish view that any civilian version of the sword, whether rapier or smallsword, was unmanly. They never took to it the way the British did, using instead the basket-hilted broadsword in both war and in peace.

            Those within the nobility who wanted to emulate French fashion eschewed the broadsword in favor of the elegant smallsword. But wearing such a sword also made a political statement. The French had at least weakly supported Scotland against England several generations before, but as the English nobles also copied French fashion, the wearing of the smallsword could be taken as submission to English rule. Confusing? Yes it is, and so it was back then as well. So it can make for interesting character choices to outfit each person on the sliding scales of Scottish vs. English vs. French and basket hilt vs. rapier vs. smallsword.

            To aid in those choices, take a cue from your costumer. If traditional Scottish dress is used, stay with the basket hilts for everyone. If the dress is continental with nary a kilt in sight, then go with smallswords for the younger characters and rapiers for the older folk.

Man of La Mancha

            Beyond the normal challenges of setting up the scenes of violence in this show, don’t add another – trying to faithfully follow the stage directions. Honestly, are you really going to cast one of the Muleteers simply because he can do a handstand? Are you really going to demand that the central fight include a ladder just because the Broadway version used one?

            As with all plays, better to read the stage directions once to get a feel of how the scene is supposed to flow, and then use a felt-tip pen and block it all out. Create your own fight according to your vision and the capabilities of the cast.

Mikado

            When Gilbert and Sullivan wrote this, they were intending a realistic representation of the Japan of the time, the silliness of the script notwithstanding. So that doesn’t explain what they possibly could have meant by the weapon called the “snickersnee”. In their time, snickersnee was English slang for a cut and thrust weapon (from old Dutch: steken = stick; snijden = cut), but it was a lower-class term for a lower-class item, a cutting weapon larger than a common knife but shorter than a sword. I suppose the nearest Japanese equivalent might be the wakizashi, but that might be overthinking the bit. It’s possible that there was a funny and lightly insulting joke of having a nobleman call his own weapon by a vulgar name. It probably got a good laugh from British audiences of the time, but modern audiences aren’t going to get it. Better to simply give the character a normal katana and ignore the joke.

Moon Over Buffalo

            There are several weapon issues for this show. First is the snippet of a sword fight across the room and over the couch. The style of stage swordplay for this period demands a very light blade and a great deal of point finesse. [It is helpful to keep the blade length at a less than standard length of 28” for the ease of the actors.] When we see “Cyrano” later in performance, the same light bladed weapon should be used, not a heavy rapier, for during the 1950’s there would have been no thought given to historical accuracy.

            “Patton” wears and fires his sidearm, but be careful. It is easy to assume that he should wear the standard issue US combat Colt 45 semiautomatic pistol Model 1911, as every other Army general wore, but Patton was a case apart. He used his own ivory handled western-styled Colt Peacemaker revolvers – in some photos just one, in other photos wearing two. Although it was a non-issued revolver, he used standard issue army holsters. A lot of people still remember him, so all of this is important. By the by, it was an ivory-handled gun – not pearl handled. He made it clear that no serious man would ever consider owning a pearl handled gun.

Musical Comedy Murders of 1940

            The properties list in the script is nicely clear and comprehensive, but there are a couple of items that might get you into trouble. The action calls for a struggle during which the Luger is to be dropped to the floor, and you’d be lucky to get more than a couple of drops before the gun [any gun] will crack. A rubber replica can be used, but the sound when it hits the floor doesn’t sound very realistic, so if you use a plastic or metal replica try blocking the scene so that the pistol can drop into the seat of an overstuffed chair. One production worked it out so the gun “fell” onto the top shelf of a bookcase. The replicas are getting harder to find in most states, and you can’t afford to replace the real items, so it behooves you to find an alternative to the bit as written.

            An earlier bit describes a sword having been removed from a mantle during a blackout and then impaling someone through an easy chair. Please folks, common sense should tell you that one prop cannot do all that. The blackout allows for the sword on the wall to be removed and hidden, and a duplicate, shortened, dummy sword to be inserted into a specially drilled out chair. Unless you can rig up a pop-up blade that’s strapped onto the dead actor (please don’t waste your time), just turn the chair slightly upstage so that the impaling is implied but not fully seen.

My Favorite Year

            The year in question being 1954, scrupulous attention to historical accuracy was just as important in the entertainment industry as it was in Shakespeare’s time – that is to say, not at all. So the sword that Swann would have for the television show would be anything that the production department would have found a few days before, and that would most likely have been any sport fencing foil. Anything you find will be appropriate.

Noises Off

            Not a fight show, but plenty of slapstick. In the second act, a backstage fireman’s ax is needed. Please consider using a hollow or plastic headed ax here, for wielding a real ax in the close quarters and speeded timing of this scene can get away from even the most conscientious actor. Even with a light ax, be sure that each actor is slightly off-line of other actors whenever the ax is swung. In other words, the implied swing of the ax will be slightly upstage or downstage of the victim.

            Gary has to tumble down the flight of stairs in the third act, and so just a reminder to go back to the movement section for tips on how to control this. Also, consider using the boxes to help start the tumble. For example, he could trip over them into a seated position first, allowing the tumble itself to start from a low squat instead of from standing (much easier).

*            Random art note: I’ve seen eight different productions of this show at every level of professionalism, and it never fails to be a huge hit with audiences. But there is one tiny moment that in every single case has stopped the laughter dead in its tracks. At first I though it was my imagination, but the last few times I’ve been able to predict it and it always happens.

             In Act II, Lloyd comes rushing onstage in a panic and says, “What the fuck is going on here!”  Up until that moment, the audience has been completely caught up with the fun, and then that single word comes out of nowhere as a slap to the face. Neither Lloyd nor any other character uses profanity at any other point in the script, and invariably the audience becomes silent. The rules have suddenly changed for them, and they don’t know what to do with that new information. It takes about a page or two for the momentum to start to climb again. So, for the sake of the laughs, change the word. Even “bloody hell” can still have all of the force of the original, and especially American audiences can laugh with it.

Of Mice and Men

            Only one gun is specifically mentioned – the Luger pistol that ultimately is the one that George uses. The Luger is a German manufactured semiautomatic pistol with a distinctive “swept” grip and exposed barrel. As written, the final scene is very dangerous for Lenny, for the Luger is supposed to be pointed directly at the back of his head at point-blank range and then fired. There are several options available to try and make this a little safer.

            First, and best, use a completely fake replica and use taped sound or an offstage starter pistol for the noise. If that is unacceptable, there are some block-barreled replicas that are blank-fire, so at least there is no discharge going directly down the barrel and straight into Lenny’s head. But the hot gases still have to go somewhere, and at point-blank range can set Lenny’s hair or costume on fire. And more importantly, the sound can still be deafening, and if the director wants a good solid sound, it can leave the actor with permanent hearing loss. Ear protection must be worn by Lenny, and George is going to want some too.

            If a blank-firing Luger proves too difficult to find, you can always change the reference in the script to another brand (“Rugar”, perhaps? It’s a real brand) and then use any long-barreled blank-fire stage safe revolver.

            In another scene in the play, several of the workers rush to get guns in order to hunt down Lenny. There are no specifics, so it can be a mix of hunting rifles, shotguns, and pistols.

            There are two instances of physical violence in the show. When Lenny kills the girl, just remember that she should be doing all of the work. Lenny is there to make it look good, but she must be in control. Special attention must be taken to protect her head and neck at all costs, so no lifting by the head.

            An early fist fight between Lenny and Curley is fairly basic, although a nice touch is to have Curley use the bareknuckle boxer’s stance described back in the unarmed stage combat chapter.

Oklahoma!

            It is easy to forget that this show is set in 1906, for the costuming and sets are usually given a Hollywood generic cowboy treatment that look a lot more like 1877. If you want to stay a bit more true to the actual history, you should aim for a Mild West feel rather than Wild West. From even before the turn of the century, no one would wear a gun in town. For a gathering such as the box social, people would be dressed in their “Sunday-go-to-meetin’” best. So even cowhands would put on their best version of a three piece black suit and bowler hat. On the other hand, it is a musical, and a grim adherence to historical reality takes a lot of the fun away from these shows.

            As for the weapons, you can go simple or costly. Some productions have every male character wearing a revolver, but the bare bones version takes two firing pistols, one knife, and one shotgun.  All of the pistols should be Western style full-sized revolvers. Curly and Jud both need to have firing models, since they fire off one round each in the smokehouse scene.

            Some productions save even more money and add to the dramatic tension of the smokehouse scene by having Jud and Curly share one firing gun. Here’s how it’s usually staged: Just before Curly enters the smokehouse, we see him take off his holster and pass it to some passing cowhand. The audience easily recognizes in this gesture that Curly is stepping into Jud’s domain in a completely non-threatening manner. Later, Jud in a rage shoots his revolver and then stares at Curly while holding the gun in his hand. Curly then uses the bit about shooting through the knot hole not as a show of bravado, but as a way of easing the gun out of Jud’s control. It makes for a tense and dramatic moment.

            During “The Farmer and the Cowman”, Aunt Eller shoots something, but it is not identified in the script. Usually it is a revolver pulled from someone’s holster. It is wise to use a much louder blank for this scene than the kind used for the earlier quiet smokehouse scene. In this scene, the gunshot has to be heard over a full orchestra playing at fortissimo and forty feet stomping on a wooden stage.

             Early on, Carnes says that he was out hunting rabbits, which explains why he’s carrying a shotgun.  Carnes later holds the shotgun on Ali Hakim. Double barrel break open shotguns are hard to find and expensive to rent, but there is no real reason why it cannot be switched to a Western rifle. I realize that the old joke being played upon here is that of a “shotgun wedding”, but two simple line changes can allow you to use the less expensive prop. Have Carnes say that he was squirrel hunting, and later have Ali switch the word shotgun to rifle easily keeps the tone of the joke.

            The Little Wonder – what is it, and did it ever really exist? There were some novelty items of the period and even through the 1920’s, about four or five inches long, tube shaped, with an eye-piece on one end and a glass reflector on the other. Look into one end and turn the other to a light source and you could see a good-quality photograph in fine detail and in seemingly large size. On occasion they were famous landscape shots, but far more commonly female nudes.

            “You ever hear of a thing called a Little Wonder? You hold it up to your eye and look through it to see pictures. You say to a fellow, “C’mere, I wanna show you something. Look through this.” While he’s looking, you press a little jig on the end, out snaps a blade, and bang, down you come.” In order to kill someone, the blade would have to shoot out through the eye-piece. That Jud found such an item is not impossible, just not mentioned from any other source. [It is interesting that even in the 1955 movie they couldn’t get a prop to do what is described. That prop had the blade swing out from the side, pivoting from instead of shooting out of the end. So if someone was looking through the eyepiece when the blade popped out, it would only have smacked the viewer on the forehead.]

            At the climactic fight between a knife-wielding Jud and an unarmed Curly, Jud dies having been impaled [fallen?] on his own knife. A retractable knife is sometimes asked for, but is both unwise and unnecessary, for a regular knife [dulled, of course] is far safer. Once the combatants separate, Jud needs only to be found lying on the ground with his back to the audience. We don’t have to move him as the sheriff can merely examine Jud from upstage of the body. We also don’t need to see the knife – the sheriff tells the assembled crowd what has happened and that is all we, the audience, need to know.

Choreography note: In an otherwise brilliant dance by Agnes de Mille, she missed one opportunity in staging the death of Curly in the Broadway and film version of the dream ballet. Instead of Jud choking him to death, it would have been spectacular to mimic sections of the final knife fight. That way, the audience would be more invested in the final outcome that contains a twist in who dies.
So, if the fight and dance choreographers can get together on this, try to have both fights mirror each other: one dance-like, ending in Curly’s death, the other brutal, ending with Jud’s death. But both with the same movement sequences.

Oliver!

            Near the end of the show Bill Sykes is shot at by one [or more] policeman. Actually, the stage notation uses the term “Hussar”, which is a lightly armed (originally Hungarian) light cavalry. Hussars were the “wild men” of the army, and were allowed not only dashing and exotic dress for their uniform but they were also more rowdy and under less control than regular soldiers. Between wars they were often given “policing” duties to keep some sort of unit discipline in them. They wouldn’t go around making arrests, but were handy in putting down riots or brawls, which they did with compassionless brutality.

            Since someone riding in on horseback would be quite a distraction during that scene, most productions stick to one or two generically uniformed soldiers. The standing civilian police force of the time carried only nightsticks and wooden rattles – no firearms, no whistles. In Dickens’ time, the uniformed and well-armed soldiers took care of the serious threats. And yet, many directors decide to go with a vaguely “Bobby” police look, thinking that having soldiers appear would be confusing to the audience, and they’re right.

            Either way, as Oliver Twist was written in 1838, the only handgun available would have been a single shot percussion pistol. You might want to consider using a revolver instead. Yes, it is an anachronism, but if you are going to use live gunshot for the sound it is comforting for the actor doing the shooting to know that, if anything goes wrong, he can pull the trigger two or three times until something goes BANG. Consider it, at least. For if the single shot pistol fails to fire, someone will have to march up and strangle or poison Sykes, for Bill Sykes must die.

Our Country’s Good

            The only weapons seen here are going to be for the British soldiers, so historically they would be the long flintlock musket called the Brown Bess. The scene calls for one of them to fire. If a true flintlock can be found, it looks wonderful to see the flash in the pan and then the muzzle flash a half second later, but the misfire rate is very high, as is the danger factor. Consider using a percussion musket, or better yet a block-barreled blank firing replica if possible.

Pajama Game

            The old vaudeville knife throwing act is called for. You find a full explanation of how to set up the bit back in the end of the Edged Weaponry section of the Staged Violence chapter.

Pentecost

            Set in an unnamed eastern-bloc country in modern times, we need not know any more specifics than to know that the soldiers in the final scene should have AK-47’s during the assault. Officers might have a pistol as a military sidearm, which could be a generic semi-auto pistol, most likely a Makarov look-alike, a rather small frame semi-auto. The refugees, although from many countries, would only have access to what could be stolen locally or available on the black market. Hunting rifles, surplus WWI and WWII rifles, and knock-off AK’s would certainly be the first choice. Stay away from UZI’s and M-16’s. These would be far too costly for refugees and the ammunition would always be difficult to find.

Peter Pan

            The toughest part of this show’s weapons concerns is what to give to Peter. He definitely carries a dagger in the scenes before the pirate ship, but if it is a dagger of regular length, it makes the duel with Captain Hook very difficult. So some choices need to be made, starting with Hook.

            Our poor captain usually is wearing a heavy and restrictive costume, heavy boots, a difficult wig and a precarious hat, and has one hand squeezed into a bell hook. Then he is stuck on a set filled with rigging, levels, pirates, Indians and lost boys, and expected to fight a duel with someone with a wire coming out of his/her back. Being kind, the fight choreographer will choose a very light-bladed sword and no scabbard, or at least have one of the pirates slip off the scabbard for him prior to the fight. If your actor is right-handed, put his hook on the left. “But the story has Hook’s hook in the right hand!”  Yes, but with all that going on onstage you’ll want him to have complete control of that sword, so put the sword in his right and the hook on the left, and change the one line in the script.

            For Peter then, much will center on the style of fighting desired. More finesse requires a matched sword, which Peter can snatch from one of the other pirates on-board. A more slapstick broad comedy fight can take more advantage of whatever flight capabilities you have, and also the chance to use a much shorter sword or even his own dagger. However, the greater the disparity in blade lengths means that Peter will have to jump back and forth that much more just to maintain appropriate distance, which may be difficult since at this point he is rigged for flying. But even if not rigged, Hook is usually twice the height of Peter, which means that even with matched swords Peter has to take two steps for each of Hook’s single steps. Give Peter a shorter weapon, and then it becomes three to one. So I repeat: Peter need not use his dagger for the fight. Before the duel he has already dispatched a couple of pirates, so could easily have one of their swords in his hand when he reveals himself to Hook.

            We have seen a lot of variation on the look of Peter’s weapon. If he uses a pirate sword, then of course the look is a simple cutlass, but his own dagger can range from an early Greek look (he is, after all, the “Pan”), all the way to a simple cross made of wood such as a child would fashion from sticks and twine.

            As for lovable Smee, directors usually ask for some type of wave-bladed dagger for his “Johnny Corkscrew”. That is the modern theatrical convention for his weapon, and that purely because of the Disney animated film. But please note the full description from the original story:

            “Shall I after him, Captain,” asked pathetic Smee, “and tickle him with Johnny Corkscrew?” Smee had pleasant names for everything, and his cutlass was Johnny Corkscrew, because he wiggled it in the wound. One could mention many lovable traits in Smee. For instance, after killing, it was his spectacles he wiped instead of his weapon.

            So you see, Smee has merely a simple cutlass, although perhaps rusty and stained with old blood from never having been wiped clean.

The Physicist

            One gun in this show is called a “Browning revolver”. Sorry, but there is no such firearm. All Browning pistols were and continue to be semiautomatics; not a revolver in the bunch. The erroneous term has been common in England since the first semiautos were produced at the turn of the century, not just Brownings but any revolver. The Brits tend to name any pistol that can fire more than one shot a “revolver”, although in this particular case the culprit was a translator’s error.

The Piano Lesson

            One quick reference in the play describes the pistol as being a .32/20. There is nothing distinctive in the look of such a gun, although the most common look will be that of a standard frame “cowboy revolver” such as the Colt Peacemaker. This caliber choice had a brief popularity at the turn of the century, and then quickly faded. 

            Revolvers bored and chambered for the .32/20 rifle cartridge had some of the stopping power of a modern .38 magnum, so this was a gun purchased with the intent of doing serious damage – what was known as a single shot kill. There is even an old song called the “32/20 Blues” which makes an exaggerated reference: “Gon’ take my 32:20 and cut her mos’ half in two”.

Pippin

            Another play that traditionally requires a collapsible knife. Since those are hard to find nowadays, you’ll have to use a fixed dagger and some creative stage combat techniques. Check the stage combat section concerning stabbing with the knife. If done right, it can look better than using a trick knife. Or use some slight-of-hand and swap out a floppy rubber knife.

Pirates of Penzance

            The choice of swords for the pirates can vary depending on how elaborate the choreographer and director want to get. If minimal, than merely sturdy replicas are fine, either of standard cutlasses or more ornate rapiers, although certainly fight-worthy blades are needed if there is going to be sword to sword contact. This might happen if for example the choreographer has some of the pirates playfully fencing in the “I Am a Pirate King” number. But if the swords are only to be used in a brawl against the Bobbies at the end of the play, then sturdy but costume grade blades are fine against the wooden billy clubs.

The Producers

            A lot of silliness in this musical, of course, so we’re not supposed to worry too much about plausibility. But there is one little bit of firearm reality that intrudes to make one moment very difficult to pull-off. Franz fires his Luger pistol wildly and that is no problem, using either a blank-fire pistol or an off-stage sound effect. But later, the gun jams somehow, and yet according to the stage directions we are supposed to here the repeated “click-click-click” as the trigger is being pulled to no effect. With the Luger pistol, this poses a problem.

            When we hear a gun “clicking”, it means that the hammer is dropping down on the firing pin, but for some reason the pin isn’t striking the bullet. It is called dry firing, and can be caused by a host of reasons, but the important thing here is that the sound can only come from the hammer striking down. For this to happen repeatedly with each successive trigger pull is easy with double-action revolvers, but not with a semi-automatic pistol. Almost all semi-autos are single-action: the trigger releases the hammer but doesn’t cock it. So you can only get one click at most. On top of that, the Luger semi-auto doesn’t have a hammer. It has a striker, a very thin rod inside the mechanism, which takes the place of the hammer and the firing pin. You can’t see this or operate it from the outside of the gun. When the striker is engaged, the trigger can release it, but the sound it makes minimal. Want to hear it? Drop a paperclip onto a table from the height of about one inch. That’s it. That’s the sound.

            So for the show, just ignore the stage directions or tape the sound effect. The audible click coming from the gun is neither possible nor necessary.

Rashomon

            As the play was written from the 1950 movie of the same name, and the screenplay was written in part by the director, we should not stray too far from the choices Kurosawa made. He has the samurai use the traditional katana, the curved double handed sword of the noble class. What is often unnoticed is that the bandit, on the other hand, has a Chinese singlehand straight sword, a dao. It is an interesting choice, although certainly as a thief he could have just as easily had a katana. And while it is possible that the thief is a disgraced ronin, a masterless samurai, there is no indication from the script or the movie to verify that, so again a katana is hard to justify for him.

            In the translation of the play, the nobleman’s sword is described as having a silver “handle”, and this leads to some confusion. This play was translated into British English, not American English. The Japanese term used in the screenplay is “tsuba”, which in American English translates as “guard”, the metal piece that keeps the hand away from the blade. British English translates the same word as “handle”, because in England the entire sword hilt (everything that isn’t the blade) is referred to collectively as the handle. Therefore the metal part that protects your hand is part of the “handle” in England, but it’s called the “guard” in the USA, and “tsuba”, in Japanese. The part that you actually hold onto is called the “grip” in England, but it’s called the “handle” in the USA, and “tsuka”, in Japanese. You can see how it gets confusing, but rest assured that for this sword the handle (the grip) is not made of silver, only the guard. Change the word for your production unless you are playing to a houseful of Brits.

            Finally, the knife used by the wife is not her own, but is rather her husband’s tanto, a sixteen inch curved battle knife. How it is that it’s in her possession is not explained.

References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot

            The script refers to a 9mm revolver, but what is required is a semi-automatic pistol. The playwright (wrongly) used the term revolver for pistol, and then assumed (wrongly) that 9mm means semi-automatic. We know this because the gun is supposed to be American military during the first Persian Gulf War, so it must be a semi-automatic pistol and not a revolver.

The Rivals

            This was written in 1775, so the swords need to be smallswords, not rapiers. It doesn’t matter that the director invariably asks for rapiers – that look is completely wrong, something like doing West Side Story with machetes.

Robin Hood

            Merry Robin, prince of thieves, noble born champion of the peasants against Norman oppression, finest archer in the realm, faithful subject of King Richard the Lionheart.  I would not dare harm one iota of Robin’s mythic persona, but I thought a little background on the development of the legend might be of some interest.

            In the search for the birth of the Robin stories we go not to 1190 and Richard I but much later, to about 1370 and Edward III, a time of plague, costly foreign war, and domestic strife. The plague had reduced by half the population of England, which increased the value of each surviving laborer, but laws were still in place that froze the salaries of workers. Those who traveled to new towns for higher wages were declared outlaws, and those who accepted the low legal payment were unable to pay their taxes, and quickly run afoul of the shire reeve (sheriff).

With not enough workers to provide a steady source of food to major population centers, many went hungry and some resorted to petty thievery and poaching. More dangerous were bands of soldiers, returned from France, who found that it was easier to kill and steal than work and buy.

Here the first stories of Robin Hood are combined with the earlier 12th century French ballads of a petty thief who outsmarts the sheriff at every turn.  A simple peasant, he takes a sly delight in making the nobles appear foolish, gives to the poor at times but has little scruple in murdering and pillaging himself should the occasion present itself.

With the civil war that followed, the longing for a time of peace under the rule of one legitimate monarch took private thoughts to the time of Richard the Lionheart, and soon the Robin myth settled there. It is at this time that Robin acquires his band of men, not so merry because they are wandering gangs of unemployed soldiers who would rather steal than work. When Henry V ascends the throne, the legend of Robin goes to work for the ruling class. He becomes for the first time a dispossessed noble (for only a noble can rule over others, rabble or not). He and his band are outlaws only because an “illegitimate” threatens the throne; they remain intensely loyal to the true crown.

There was a very practical side to this appropriation of the peasant tale. It promoted the practice of archery. The finest arm of the English army was its superior light infantry in the form of longbow archers. Other nations had crossbows, but crossbows could take a full minute to reload. In the hands of a trained archer, twelve arrows could be fired in that time, each with enough force and accuracy to pierce the stoutest armor at 200 yards. When fired in volley they had an effective battle range of 800 yards. This was an accuracy of rapid fire not again attained by infantry units until the development of breech loaded rifles of the 1890’s.

The major problem with the longbow is that it requires constant practice to develop the strength and accuracy needed. Henry VIII went so far as to decree that men of fighting age had to practice every Sunday after morning religious service. The idea of having young lads attempt to emulate the exploits of a popular hero must have appealed greatly to the military leaders, while softening Robin’s motivation by making him a wronged landowner and not another revolting peasant would soothe the nerves of the political leaders. Exactly how it was that this nobleman developed the skills of an archer-infantryman is tacitly ignored.

The animosity between Anglo-Saxons and Normans inherent in the story also had a practical use. The Anglo-Saxons made better archers because of their larger size.

An interesting footnote is the creation of the secondary characters. Little John is famous for his cudgeling of Robin by using his quarterstaff. Its use is very similar to some of the skills required for handling a bill or halberd in battle. Friar Tuck is a rascal of a monk who is also able to handle a sword. Tuck is the anglicized form of the Norman-French word “estoc”, which is a longsword with no true cutting edge, used for thrusting only. It also had a 13th century meaning, to “reprove” or “upbraid”. (The meaning of tuck as in “to eat heartily” did not come into use until the late 19th century.)

If a “historically correct” production of Robin Hood is desired, the sword types are limited to single hand broadswords with simple guards. The sword would only occasionally be gripped with two hands to deliver a powerful “baseball” swing or a finishing thrust when the opponent is down. Foot soldiers often used the falchion, a short, heavy meat-cleaver of a weapon that required little practice to put to deadly use. Archers had a short sword as a sidearm in battle, but they wore no armor. The sword was only used as a weapon of last resort, for an archer’s best use in war was to take a long-range position behind the lines and fire into the enemy.

If your idea of a “traditional” Robin Hood (as mine) is Errol Flynn, a sturdy but light blade is needed instead of a broadsword blade. This keeps the moves dashing rather than bashing.

The longbow presents a different problem altogether. It is a wonderful weapon, made of a uniform single cut of yew and about 6 feet tall, with the arrow almost a yard long, but unfortunately wasn’t used by the English until the late 14th century, about two hundred years later than the reign of Richard the Lionheart. The quiver of arrows the Robin and the Merry Men wear on their backs is another problem. Quivers were worn on the hip – it is only Victorian era book illustrators that move the quiver onto poor Robin’s back. The simplest way around these dilemmas is to ignore them.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead

            Sorry, but this is another one of those shows that seems to require a retractable knife, and unfortunately it is nearly impossible to find one which is realistic enough. Add to that the fact that the liability is so large for a retractable on stage that American insurance companies won’t cover a show that uses one.

            But don’t despair. A close reading of the script reveals that a retractable knife is never actually mentioned, only that the Player King realistically “stabs” himself and then shows that it was merely an illusion. If the actor can perfect the stage combat version of the stab described in an earlier section of this book, the moment concerned can be just as effective as using a retractable knife, and far safer to the actor.

The Rover

            As the play was written in 1677, we’re in an interesting time in terms of the type of sword that is most appropriate. We’re in the transition period here between the rapier and the smallsword, and in general the swords were still the bulkier former rather than the ultra-light latter. You don’t get any help from the script, which refers to merely the “sword”. There is a passing reference to the Spaniard having the longest sword, and this was a common stereotype of the period, the Spanish having the reputation of carrying swords a little too large and too ornate, but not being able to handle them well.

            Blunt has a rusty sword and buff belt. Although he is a gentleman and we would expect him to have a light courtsword or transitional rapier, he is an English country gentleman, and city wits never missed a chance to denigrate their country brethren as being hopelessly out of date. So his weapons should be an old fashioned full cup hilted rapier.

            The addition of the pistol is interesting in that it would have to have been a wheellock pistol, an extraordinarily expensive item for a civilian to have.

Scarlet Pimpernel

            Here is yet another show in which the sword choice for the final duel must be made within a range of possibilities. The action takes place in 1792, so noble-born civilians would use the smallsword in the light and fast fighting style of the late 1700’s. The military soldiers and even the lower and mid-ranking officers would use a heavy-bladed sabre, and these two swords cannot fight each other for long without the smallsword blade shattering at the first or second clash. It seems that the Scarlet Pimpernel takes a sword from one of the soldiers, so this would normally lead to a bashing sabre duel, very rustic, brutal and ungentlemanly. But the original play was written in 1905, and the fight would have been a very fast version of Olympic style fencing – very Barrymore. The Broadway version made a compromise and used a sturdy schlaeger blade on a military sabre hilt, thereby increasing the strength of the blade but losing some of the finesse of the period. Other productions have made other choices, none of them incorrect.

            No matter what the blade choice, don’t let the nationalities of the characters influence the hilt choice. In this era, style is more affected by class than geography. The French soldiers would definitely have stout looking sabres; the English nobles would have individualized thin smallswords.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

            The show is set in 1851, so the rifles and shotguns will all have the same look – percussion and flintlock blackpowder muzzleloaders. Sorry, no lever-action rifles and no break-open shotguns, double-barrel or otherwise. They hadn’t been invented yet.

Shenandoah

            Just a reminder that when the Civil War began, both sides had nearly identical firearms. When the war suddenly flared up and more and more men were thrown into action, huge numbers of old style flintlock smoothbore muskets (most dating back to the Revolutionary War) were quickly retrofitted with new percussion locks until newly manufactured rifles could arrive. During the final year and a half of the war, the Southern army had almost no manufacturing capability and had to scramble to purchase rifles. As the war dragged soldiers had to make do with any and all muskets and rifles that they could scrape together. The weaponry would show the same kind of long use and wear and a certain level of randomness, as should the uniforms.

Sherlock Holmes

            The firearms used by Holmes and Watson are only mentioned in stories covering the early part of Holmesian fiction, roughly from 1879 to 1903. There are many references to guns, but few specifics, and although Holmes and Watson are both supposed to be knowledgeable concerning firearms and their use, the author of the stories was not. Although Conan-Doyale was a gun enthusiast, he was not a very diligent researcher. Many inaccuracies abound, but we can still get a general idea as to the guns Sir Arthur had in mind.

            Watson, we know, has an “old service revolver”, so more than likely would be similar to a Webley with a four inch barrel. Yes, I know that there is a specific reference to an “Eley’s No.2”. But Eley Brothers didn’t make a No.2 model; Webley did. Either way, neither type of pistol was standard military issue during the time that the fictional Watson would have been in the service. And Holmes specifically tells Watson to slip the revolver into his pocket; again, not practical with the true service revolvers of the time.

            Holmes himself preferred a revolver with a short barrel, perhaps only two inches. This would be something with decent stopping power but could also easily fit in a coat or pants pocket, or in one story the pocket of his dressing gown. Something similar to the British Bulldog, more than likely.

            One last thing about Holmes, we know that he has tremendous muscular strength belied by his thin build. We also know that he has trained (and we suppose has become a master of) the art of Baritsu. This was a real martial art form which was something of a sensation for upper class Victorian London men. It only flourished from 1899 to 1903. It combined boxing, wrestling, fencing, judo, jujitsu and most especially the application of attacks and defenses using a standard cane, walking stick or even a folded umbrella.

Sound of Music

            Only Rolfe specifically has a pistol in a later scene of the play, and a good look is a Walther P-38 or the Luger P-08. Although there are other guns that also might be appropriate, these two have an instant Nazi look that most audience members will recognize.

            For the other soldiers chasing after the Von Trapps, simple bolt-action rifles are just fine.

Sleuth

            This show has one of the scariest moments you will find in theatre – not for the audience, but for the actors. A critical plot point has one actor execute another with a point-blank shot to the back of the head. It violates every rule we have on gun safety, but there it is in the script, so what can you do?

            The first thing is to try to get as much distance as you can between the shooter and the victim. Even moving the gun an extra six inches away can reduce the danger level dramatically. Although it may sound strange, in this case the one thing you should not do is have the shooter aim slightly upstage of the victim. If you are using a block-barreled gun (as you should) the hot gasses from the blank are going to go off to either side of the gun, so in this case the victim is in slightly less danger if the barrel is pointed directly at him. But don’t get me wrong; the danger level here is still extremely high.

            The only way to protect the victim is by isolating him completely not only from the discharge but also from the sound. That’s right, the sound. At point-blank distance the sound from even a quarter load .22 caliber blank can lead to permanent hearing loss.

            Luckily the victim is dressed as a clown in this scene, and therein lays the key to safety. As part of the costume, construct a clown wig on a light helmet (the detachable linings for construction hard hats work great), and attach built-in ear muffs (get at least 23 decibel protection). The entire helmet can be hidden by the wig. Finish by completely fireproofing the wig and the upper portion of the clown costume with a suitable liquid theatrical fire retardant.

Sweeney Todd

            The story of Sweeney Todd originally “occurred” in 1805, although the Sondheim musical is set in 1835. Either way, the type of gun Anthony uses at the insane asylum would be a single-shot flintlock or percussion pistol. If you want to have the gunshot come from the gun rather than a sound effect, I suggest using a blank-fire multishot revolver instead. It’s out of period, but if anything goes wrong the actor can simply keep pulling the trigger until the shot occurs.

            There are some special effects houses that make the bleeding razor required for this show, but in order to keep the razor of manageable size the blood reservoir has to be separate from the razor. That often means that the squeeze bulb with the blood and the long tube connect it to the razor has to be hidden up the sleeve of the actor. Not a very elegant solution, but a bit better than the oversized handles which hide a very small bulb. No one style seems to be any more effective or reliable than another.

Tarzan

            The first Tarzan novel was written in 1912, and we are given to understand that it is a contemporaneous tale, so the actions concerning Tarzan and Jane would take place somewhere around 1905 to 1910. As such, the guns used by the hunters would all be cartridge-style firearms. No percussion cap muskets or pistols here.

            Big-game hunters of the turn of the century and beyond would have what they describe as “elephant guns”. These are weapons capable of firing a bullet of large enough size and with sufficient force so as to bring down a charging elephant or rhinoceros or hippopotamus with one shot. That being said, there is no particular look for what constitutes an “elephant gun”. It could be any shotgun or rifle of the period, but specially made to withstand the explosive power of the cartridge load. From the outside it would look like any other normal firearm.

The Three Musketeers

            I’m going to spend a little more time on this show, so bear with me, please. It has happened so many times that a theatre company will choose to do one of the many versions of this play in the hopes of having a blockbuster show, only to have the final product be vaguely disappointing. I don’t think that it is a problem with the scripts.

It is not without reason that so many films, plays, and novels are written of the swashbuckling era of rapiers and musketeers. Visually lush and thematically exciting, many are the acting companies that have even set their productions of several Shakespeare plays in the mid-1600’s instead of the late 1590’s.  And certainly we have all thrilled to the musketeers on the big screen, and we hope to recreate that excitement on stage when we reproduce the period.

Unfortunately, many productions have fallen far short of the expectations that caused the selection in the first place. Most often, the excitement of the novel or film is simply lost on stage. Part of the problem may be in not fully understanding which period is to be truly represented.

Most of us start by closely examining the art, philosophy, science, and culture of the year in which the play is set. Unfortunately, this may not have been in the author’s mind at all when the novel was written. In works such as Cyrano or The Three Musketeers, the authors were writing in the middle of the Romantic period, the mid 1800’s, in which huge sweeps of emotion were sought out and enjoyed by the audience.

The music, architecture, art and dress of the time expressed this larger than life passion, an explosion of human vitality that we dismiss as being melodramatic but they viewed as being intensely “heartfelt”. The popular works of art of the time reflected this, and one can feel the powerful, almost soaring drive of the time in hearing the music of Glinka, for example.

Just as Dumas wrote for 19th century sensibilities, so did filmmakers of the 1930’s and ‘40’s provide breathless excitement for audiences hungry for grand passion to forget the harsh realities of the depression, and later to bolster their courage for the frightening task of fighting another World War. When they watched Errol Flynn as Captain Blood or as Robin Hood, they were looking for an emotional sustenance that could get them through the difficult times ahead. Surely this is just as romantic a view of life as was the earlier period.

Small wonder that filmmakers borrow from the romantic period when attempting to create an action movie. Star Wars composer John Williams knew that the most viscerally effective music for the space-based swashbuckling film would be a “heroic” theme drawn on the operatic overtures of the 1800’s. (Interesting that jazz works so well in the bar scene. Any type of rock music would have been grossly inappropriate.)

Just as the right music, be it from Rossini, Berlioz, or Williams, automatically creates excitement, so too can the set, costumes, and acting style further propel the audience into the passion of the piece. Vibrant colors, sweeping movement, visual excess on an operatic scale, these can provide a great deal of support to modern actors who, trained in subdued realism, often feel lost in the fiery world of grand passion and mistake it for melodrama.

As far as the simulation of violence is concerned, I am going to take a minority view and suggest that creation of a historically correct fighting style, though certainly just as exciting, is not necessarily what the audience has paid to see. I would suggest looking at the films of the 30’s and 40’s to get an idea of what worked best, as well as studying a bit about the fencing style that was used onstage in the mid-1800’s. Even a review of the original Star Wars trilogy will show that many of the moves in the light-sabre fights are quite similar to those in the lively broadsword fight of Flynn’s Robin Hood.

The best style source for the period is from the paintings and sculptures of 1820 to 1880.  Browse through an art book while listening to the overture from William Tell or Tristan et Isolde. Look at the scenic designs of operas and plays produced at the time. Read a Superman comic book while listening to the theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dance a waltz taking leaps instead of steps, and do it to the waltz music of the movie The Addams Family.

            Pure melodrama, grand passion, driving energy and comic book violence – what more could you want from theatre? This show is sometimes difficult for American actors to embrace because they feel self-conscious in trying to perform in an acting style that celebrates the joy of expressing emotions for their own sake. This is opera on the grand scale, and anything that gets in the way of the actors or the audience to experience that rush of excitement must be excised form the production. There is nothing in this show that should be a slave to history, and nothing in the acting or directing that should come from a tradition of method acting. Realistic, yes; naturalistic, no. All of the actors must believe that these people lived this large every day of their lives.

            A few anachronisms should be noted, though not necessarily corrected onstage. Depending on which script you use, the muskets themselves may need to fire more than once relatively rapidly. Of course, the real muskets couldn’t do that, nor could you actually aim and fire the gun as a marksman would with any degree of accuracy. The real muskets were braced against the chest, not shoulder, in order to better absorb the shock, and they were quite heavy and simply could not be held in one’s arms for firing.  Every musketeer carried a four-foot forked pole onto which he would rest the musket before firing. But this is all harsh realism that we must blithely ignore.

            Likewise, because the swords for these musketeers were also historically heavy, we need to make them light for dynamic and energetic fight sequences. It should be noted that most recent movie versions use a historically correct heavy sword (although made of lightweight aircraft aluminum), and then have to speed up the film during the fights. Stage actors will need some help in order to keep the fights exciting, even if that means using different swords for different scenes. There is certainly no harm in having a light fencing blade for the dueling type fights and then identical hilts outfitted with heavy cutting blades for the big brawling mass scenes.

            So we allow historical accuracy to take a back seat to the emotional accuracy of the later period in terms of acting and fighting styles, set design, and music choices. The stunning theatricality of the swashbuckling films of the 1940’s is a fitting testimony to the effectiveness of an eclectic, emotional, exciting approach as opposed to a scrupulously researched and all too often lifeless realism found in many modern productions.

            The latest stage version, written by Ken Ludwig, is quite wonderful, but has a couple of specific prop challenges. D’artagnan’s sword is supposed to be broken each night. The most reliable thing to do is have two swords, one complete and the other with a pre-broken blade which is barely tack-welded at the point of the break. If the weld is made to be brittle, it should break easily each night. Of course that also means that the blade must be re-welded before each show. Brazing will not be strong enough, nor will any type of glue. The only alternative is to make a fake blade out of wood, which won’t sound very convincing when it’s broken.

            That script also calls for the Countess DeWinter to pull a “17th century switchblade” from her bodice. That is from the stage directions. Ludwig’s script is filled with historical impossibilities, and a “17th century switchblade” is probably the least egregious of them. Such an item is of course a pure fantasy piece, which has no correlation to any actual weapon. One was built for the Old Vic premier of the show in London, but you are not going to be able to find one anywhere on this side of the pond. Unless you build your own (good luck), it is easier to have the countess use a regular fixed-bladed stiletto. The reason that the Ludwig version used a switchblade was to doubtless to maximize the size of the weapon, since there isn’t much room in a bodice to hide a knife, and a fold-out knife (requiring two hands to unfold) has no menace. One nice way around this problem is to have M’lady appear to pull out an impossibly large full length dagger from the bodice with the right hand while her left hand tugs at the top of the bodice. You guessed it: the dagger is hidden in the sleeve of her left forearm. The bit gets a great laugh and provides a decent sized knife for the fight. Alternatively, a knife can simply be drawn from her sleeve or from the folds in her skirt near her waist. Don’t try putting it on her leg. She’ll never be able to get to it quickly enough for the requirements of this show.

            His script also calls for D’artagnan to be struck with a breakaway bottle. Beyond the cost, I dislike using breakaway glass because of the level of danger it brings to the production. Even the best ones can cause a concussion, and the pieces that drop onto the floor (and sometimes fly out into the audience) are quite sharp. I suggest finding a way to sneak an already broken bottle into the scene and use a crash-box for the sound.

            Lastly, no matter which script you use, this is a show that begs to be underscored. Challenge your sound designer to have music playing not just for the fights, but for every moment of the play, for your actors will need musical support in order to create and maintain this world of grand passion.

To Kill a Mockingbird

            Beyond the layers of symbolism that surround Atticus’ shooting of the rabid dog, let’s go over the practicalities of the moment as seen by the townspeople. At the time of this story there is no treatment or vaccine against the rabies virus. Getting even slightly bitten by that dog is a death sentence (it wasn’t until 2012 that the first known case of an unvaccinated human survived the infection). That is why the streets are empty and everyone has shuttered their doors and windows.  This is a REAL zombie attack, and the dog must be killed.

            But it must be killed, not just wounded, in one shot. Anyone with a shotgun could certainly strike it, but they would have to get fairly close to make sure that the shot is lethal. And with a shotgun there is no a guarantee that the wounded, bleeding and enraged animal wouldn’t flee. That could make an already terrifying situation far worse. A rifle is needed, and the rifle shot must be aimed so well that the dog will drop where it stands.

            In a small town such as this with just the one sheriff and no deputy, a shotgun and a pistol is all that he would have. He had to scrounge up a rifle from someone before finding Atticus. The best choice here would be a bolt-action rifle. It is the kind most often used both for large game hunting and target shooting, and would give Atticus the best available tool for what is still a very difficult task.

Tom Sawyer

            If we take at face value Samuel Clemens’ assertion that the incidents in the book are all based on real events from his boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri, we can assume that the stories are set no earlier than 1845 and no later than 1848. That means that any shotguns or rifles are going to be simple single-barrel muzzleloaders, identical to each other in outward appearance. The only pistols that would realistically be seen at this time and place would be single shot percussion style. Revolvers had been invented, but were not widely available until after 1848, and then only to the military.

Tosca

            Just as in Carmen, the typical firearms for the period are all single-shot muskets and pistols, and it is right during the time when European armies are switching from flintlock to percussion lock. If you want the muskets to fire and you want flame and smoke coming from the barrel, make life easier for everyone and use percussion rather than flintlock muskets.

            The sidearm for soldiers of the period is a military sabre, not a pistol. Pistols in the military were mostly used by irregulars (scouts, raiders, skirmishers, etc).

Treasure Island

            Peg leg

            Switchblade

            Firing in face

            Knife throwing

Twelve Angry Men

            Also now commonly called Twelve Angry Women or Twelve Angry Jurors or Twelve Angry Citizens. A “unique” spring-loaded switchblade is called for, but the problem in this day and age is that switchblades are mostly illegal in the United States. When the play was written, switchblades could be purchased at any corner drugstore, but those days are long gone. One way around the problem is to try to use a modified novelty switchblade comb, although it is a fragile prop, far too fragile to attempt anything like the stab into the table. Oh, no, what do we do? Use the prop but just don’t stab it into the table. There, was that so hard?

            Some directors really are loath to give up on the stab into the tabletop bit, so they have the set designer work out a table that has a piece of Styrofoam built into it. If you have a sturdy real switchblade (don’t tell me how you got one) that works fine. If you only have the novelty switchblade comb conversion, it will simply collapse after the first stab.

            Another possibility is to use a butterfly knife, but the action of opening one isn’t exactly what is called for in the script. Besides, the likelihood is high that the handles of the knife will flop down comically once the knife is stuck in the table, so this isn’t a very elegant solution. The point may be moot, as these with time are also becoming more and more restricted as more “fear laws” are passed.

Uncle Vanya

            In Act III, here is what the stage directions call for: Helena tries to wrest a revolver from Voitski. He frees himself and rushes in, looking for Serebrakoff. He shoots at him. He flings the revolver on the floor, and drops helpless into a chair.  Great. This is about the worst combination of actions one can do with a gun onstage. Wrestling with a loaded gun means that if the gun goes off during the struggle (it happens) someone gets a face-full of burning gunpowder or a high likelihood of setting someone’s costume on fire. Throwing a gun on the floor means that sooner or later your firing gun is going to be a bunch of scrap metal.

            There are some ways around the danger points, though. If the brief struggle between Voitski and Helena takes place just outside of a doorway, a quick turn by Voitski so that he is partially hidden again by the door frame provides a moment where he can swap the dummy gun with which they had been struggling with the firing gun. A simple hand-off can be done by an stagehand. As for flinging the gun to the ground, just cut the action. He can collapse into the chair and then let the gun gently drop to the floor from just a few inches, or better yet let it drop into the chair first. Don’t fling the gun into the chair – it’ll bounce out as though from a trampoline.

The Unexpected Guest

            A slightly confusing prop is described in the script, and in the novella from which it was derived. A gun is described as being a Continental war souvenir, possibly WWI or WWII, a service revolver that has an external safety. The British army did in fact use revolvers as their sidearms, but on the continent (Germany, Italy, etc.) the pistols were almost always semiautomatics. Don’t worry too much about that. Since the turn of the century, the English have had a bad habit of referring to any multishot pistol as a revolver, regardless of how the gun operates. Simply change the line from revolver to pistol, and use an appropriate Continental semi-auto.

Variations on the Death of Trotsky

            Several of the variations calls for Trotsky to spend the scene with a mountaineer’s ice-axe embedded in his skull. (In actual fact, the assassin did strike Trotsky to the head with the axe, but did not impale him with it. Trotsky survived the initial blow but died a day later from the injury.)

            There a couple of ways to try to rig this effect, neither of which uses a real ice-ax. Either way you’re going to have to build a false replica made of cardboard or Styrofoam:

            The simplest way is to mount it onto a wire “C” shape that will simply straddle the actor’s head – just like the “arrow through the head” gag. If the wire is thin enough, the actor’s hair can cover it.

            But since even the lightest pick-ax that you build might still be too heavy for that light frame, the better way is to build the ax into a buckram cap that is sewn into a wig. A competent make-up or costume designer would know how to do this, as it requires some skill with wigs and prosthetics.

The Visit

            When the townsfolk go out late in the play to hunt the “tiger”, they could have mostly rifles, not necessarily shotguns. A few fowling pieces mixed in is no problem, and although it is true that to bring down a large mammal, feline or human, a rifle is more appropriate, the whole point is that people have grabbed whatever lethal instrument is near at hand. Don’t sweat it, and give the actors whatever you can find.

West Side Story

            Switchblade knives are mandatory for this show, but nowadays are completely illegal to manufacture, sell or transport – and can be charged as a felony offense, so we aren’t talking parking citation here. What to do? Well, you could use other forms of one-hand-opening knives if permitted in your area, but they won’t have the same side-swing-out look so perfect for the 1950’s. Regular fixed bladed knives can be used, but they lack the added sense of menace and flash that switchblades have. A final choice has the best look, but is a headache for the actors and properties master, and that is the aluminum switchblade combs sold in novelty shops. The plastic comb can be removed and a thin piece of metal put in its place, but this will always be a weak prop, subject to early failure. Keep several on hand for the run of the show, for you’ll use them up quickly.

            At the final scene, Chico’s gun is a small framed revolver. Semi-auto pistols, although period correct, would have been too expensive for Chico to have acquired.

            True Stage Weapon Story: Every show that uses a blank-firing gun has a story about what happened when the gun didn’t go off. This isn’t that story. In one production of this show, poor Tony struggled bravely through the performance even though he was suffering from a fairly nasty flu. Notwithstanding, he was doing a very good job of keeping himself together. Finally, during the last scene, at just before the moment where he was supposed to get shot by Chico, Tony’s stomach told him that he shouldn’t be onstage for what was about to happen. So off he ran back into the wings and safely through the side stage door to a place where he could privately lose his dinner. The actors who remained onstage simply waited patiently – all except for one. Chico, unaware of Tony’s exit, had timed his dramatic second story balcony appearance, gun in hand, to the exact second that Tony would call out for Maria in time with the underscored music. Out sprang Chico and pointed his gun at …. no Tony! As Chico searched the stage (and audience) for some trace of the leading man, who should make her entrance but the leading woman. “Oh, well,” thought Chico, “at least it’s a principal” as he pointed his gun at the perplexed Maria and shot her. Maria (after very briefly considering yelling out “Ha! You missed me!”) took the line of least resistance and promptly fell to the ground. It was at this precise moment that our Tony came rushing back in, too late for his own funeral but apparently just in time for someone else’s. He rushed to Maria’s side and tried to shake her to consciousness, but Maria was too crafty to fall for that old ploy, and resolutely stayed dead. To his credit, Tony sang the song that Maria was supposed to sing to him – “There’s A Place For Us” – and then, realizing that the rest of the cast was too terrified to approach the chaos and remained rooted to their spots upstage, he lifted Maria and carried her off. 

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

THE PROP – Umbrella Gun:
You don’t need an umbrella gun.

I know. It say’s in the script that you need an umbrella gun.
“(George takes from behind his back a short-barreled shotgun, ….. From the barrel of the gun blossoms a large red and yellow Chinese parasol.)”
Yup. But that didn’t come from the playwright.

We forget how a successful play gets published. When a show becomes a hit, the publishing company doesn’t want the playwright’s script. No, it quickly scoops up the stage manager’s script, the one with all the little changes and specific actions that occurred during the run. And that usually includes the scenic layout, a props list, all of the blocking – in a word, everything that normally comes up in rehearsal. Those are director and actor and designer choices, not from the playwright.
For this show, they needed some sort of gag gun. Any kind of gag gun would do. And low and behold, Stembridge Gun Rentals in Manhattan happened to have all of the umbrella rifles that were used for a big dance number in the 1959 Broadway run of the musical Gypsy. The barrel diameter on those were so large, that in a smaller theatre it looked a bit more like a shotgun than a rifle, hence the stage manager’s description.

(Also, they changed out the fabric on the parasol, because the originals popped out an American flag. Not wanting the prop to imply some sort of hidden political meaning, they temporarily recovered the parasol with the fabric from a different cheap parasol. After the Broadway run, each time someone would do this show they would usually just rent one of the pieces from Stembridge, which of course, had the American flags on them. After a while, people assumed that it was a specific Albee request. It was not. But for the next three decades, if you rented a prop gun for this show, that’s what you would see.)

So, for your production, feel absolutely free to use whatever prop still maintains the dramatic power of the moment – parasol, bang!-flag, confetti steamers …. go for it.

THE PROP – Breakaway Bottle:
You don’t need a break-away bottle.

I know. It’s say’s in the script that you need to break a bottle. 
“(George breaks a bottle against the portable bar … holding the remains of the bottle by the neck.)” 
Yup. But again, the specific blocking didn’t come from the playwright.

Many of you already know that I am not a fan of using breakaways. They’re expensive, break when they shouldn’t, sometimes don’t break when they should, and can still cut skin. So I offer an alternative:

If George can be behind the bar, he can throw the bottle into a well-padded box. At the same time he can kick a slightly elevated crash box, causing it to tumble to create the sound. Since his throwing hand has disappeared behind the bar, it is simply a matter of grabbing a pre-set “broken bottle” and slowly raising his hand to reveal it to the audience. If he believes that he smashed it against the edge of the bar, the audience will believe it. A very simple sleight-of-hand that convinces the audience and is kind to both the actors and your props budget.

            A shotgun is produced at one point in the play that shoots out a parasol with the American flag on it. All of this information is in the stage directions – but not in one word of the dialogue. So you don’t need to track down a parasol-shooting shotgun. And there is no deep meaning in the fact that it is an American flag that pops out. The only reason the stage directions are so specific is because that’s what they used in the original Broadway 1962 production. It was not a specific request by the playwright, who just wanted a gag to break the tension. They simply rented one of the props guns left over from the 1959 run of Gypsy. [Those guns no longer exist, but they were rented out for decades. Unfortunately, the barrel diameter had to be so large to accommodate the umbrella that the shotgun looked ludicrous.] For the earlier run in London, that prop shot out a red and gold Chinese parasol. For this show, any rifle that shoots out any kind of a gag will work just fine.

            There is a quick reference to the item being Japanese. Nothing special there. During the early 1960’s most novelty items sold in the US and Europe were made in Japan, as were a wide range of cheap, mass-produced items of rather dubious quality. At the time, to say “made in Japan” would get a quick knowing chuckle from the listener. The joke is now lost on modern audiences.

            Helpful hint: there is also a bottle-breaking moment in the show, and breakaways can cost you a bit of change and put the front row of the audience in danger. To save some money, have the bit occur behind the bar, and place a small crash box there for the sound.

You Can’t Take It With You

            The Russian ballet instructor Kolenkhov does some sort of judo move on Mr. Kirby, and if your actors have gymnastic ability this can be quite showy. If their only experience is in judo or wrestling or none at all, then don’t let them work something out on their own. Their techniques assume some sort of cushion on which to fall – without that, even experienced athletes can hurt themselves. Instead, use a stage combat technique that will keep both actors injury free. Here are three possibilities – one simple, the others more advanced. Either way, Kirby initiates the movement by putting his hands gently in front as if saying, “very flattering, but, no, not really”.

            a] With his right hand Kolenkhov takes Kirby’s right wrist. Kirby spins to the left simulating being twisted around until his right arm is behind his own back. The simulation can end here or …

            b] … Kolenkhov places the top of his foot behind the calf muscle of one of Kirby’s leg, simulating a leg sweep, as both actors perform a combined sit fall.

            c] Just as in variation A, Kolenkhov takes Kirby’s right wrist, but Kirby performs a forward roll as Kolenkhov pantomimes giving him a “spinning wristlock”. You’ve probably seen this move in a lot of movies and television shows. The aggressor, in this case Kolenkhov, gently pretends to twist the victim’s wrist around in a circle as the aggressor spins 360 degrees in place. Normally this move would leave the victim with his own arm held against his back, but we’re going to push the simulation to allow for Kirby to take that forward roll. Kirby only has to worry about doing the forward roll. It is Kolenkhov’s job to make it seem as though he is maintaining contact with Kirby’s wrist and leading the movement. [Kolenkkhov must only pantomime grabbing Kirby’s wrist, as Kirby’s arm must be free to spin underneath Kolenkhov’s hand.] Should this bit of pantomime prove difficult, Kolenkhov can forget about doing the spin and merely pretend to crank Kirby’s arm once as though it were a handle from an old water pump. The audience will buy it because it is a very old gag.

            After Kirby lands, Kolenkhov steps upstage and pantomimes a drop to the floor on his [arbitrarily] left side while the right leg “lands” on Kirby’s stomach. Of course, Kolenkhov’s right knee is bent so there is no contact with Kirby, merely bridging over the stomach, but the right foot can make a resounding stomp on the floor to simulate the impact.

Zorro

The sword of California in the early 1800’s was actually two swords, one military (the sabre) and the other civilian (the smallsword). While the sabre is a strong battlefield weapon meant to cut off limbs, the smallsword was designed not for handling strong cutting motions but rather for the very quick deflection and thrust movements seen in modern swordplay.

Which sword would Zorro use? If we assume that he must fight soldiers armed with the sabre, he needs to either have a sabre himself in order to block a sabre cut, or quickly run-thru his opponent with a smallsword before the soldier’s sabre comes crashing down. A smallsword simply cannot block a sabre.

So if Zorro has a smallsword, he can only kill and run, since “swordplay” against the heavy sabre is impossible. If Zorro has a sabre, he can hack away broadsword-style, but certainly cannot make his trademark “Z” very quickly, nor perform finesse moves of a dashing swordsman. How do we get around this conundrum?

In “The Mark of Zorro” with Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone, they simply used different blades on look-alike sword hilts depending on the necessity of the scene. In fights with the soldiers or cutting through a two-inch rope, Zorro’s sabre blade was straight but broad. In his duel with the villain, it transformed magically into the thin straight epee blade of the smallsword. Either way, the hand guard was the modern Olympic sabre, as it was for “Zorro, the Gay Blade” with George Hamilton, and the television series of the 1950’s with Guy Williams. In the newer “Mask of Zorro” with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins a more delicate compromise was made. Zorro uses a 17th century transitional rapier, just slightly ahead in time of the sword of the Three Musketeers, still a cut and thrust weapon with a straight blade, but with a leaner look. Keep in mind that the quick moves needed for finesse “point moves” are still as impossible for this weapon as it would be for the sabre, and the transitional rapier is hopelessly out of period, but it at least lowers the plausibility threshold somewhat.

All of this means that whatever you should happen to choose will also be a compromise, so the best advice I can give is to make two separate decisions. First, find out what fighting style is going to be used for the show. If it is going to feature fast fencing-style moves, go with a light blade. If heavy cutting motions will predominate, then a sturdier blade will be more suitable. Then, decide what look you want for each of the characters. Most sword makers can match any hand guard style to any blade width.

Zoo Story

            I’m sorry that this show is so popular, for it requires a prop that gives nightmares to properties masters throughout the United States. Albee wrote-in a knife that needs to retract, stay stuck in the actor’s chest, slowly bleed during an interminable monologue, and then be able to be removed with the blade exposed. If you’ve read other sections in the book you already know how I feel about retractable blades, so you can guess that I’m no fan about shows that require one, especially one as complicated as this. I strongly suggest here that the stab be performed with a simple dulled knife, using the stage combat techniques described earlier, and then pull the knife out immediately – before the monologue. A blood pack taped inside the shirt can be popped at the time of the stab, allowing the blood to ooze out slowly during the rest of the scene. Reasonably intelligent actors and directors can make it work.