The title alone is enough to start a conversation. It’s one thing to be over here where these sort of acts, thankfully, don’t really happen, but what is it like to be in a country where the risk of this is so real?

The show follows two teenagers who were in physics class when a fellow student burst in with a gun and shot the ceiling before being tackled by another student. Everyone is given three days off from school and will be given access to a counsellor on their first day back if they feel they need it.

The very same day, in the school on the other side of town, a student shot and killed 15 of their fellow classmates.

Through dark humour, we try to understand what it’s like to be in this position. To have been in a situation where you could have technically been shot at school but it’s deemed as a minor incident because someone in a school close by succeeded in their task.

The girls struggle with the answer of whether or not they are victims. They survived and none of their classmates were killed, but does that mean they aren’t victims?

The play tackles the pressures of teens in America, the fear of not only guns but the rise in violent misogyny. The manifestos of these shooters contain sexist comments towards women, and with the influence of these manosphere podcast bros growing stronger every day, it’s terrifying. How horrifying must it be to be in a class full of guys who are actively being influenced by the far right? Their decisions affect your future, your life. And no one seems to be able to do anything about it. How angry are you supposed to get, how much are you supposed to ignore, when are your problems big enough, and when is the situation too big for your problems to matter? All of these questions and more are raised in this fantastic piece of writing.

I am strongly anti-gun. Easy for me to say from the comfort of a country where pretty much all firearms, aside from standard hunting rifles, are banned. But gun violence can still happen here. I lost a friend of mine to gun violence a few years back, and that is something that still affects me. I can only imagine the fear and the trauma facing those who live in a country where access to these guns and far more dangerous ones are just a poorly supervised gun show away.

I was already blown away by the performers but to find out afterwards that one was an understudy who took on the part one day before the cast and crew flew out to Edinburgh for the festival had my jaw legitimately drop.

When I write reviews for shows that I love so much, I tend to hope they get a TV series or a film, but I selfishly don’t want this to. It’s everything from the subtle changing of day on the calendar clock, the collective feeling shared in the audience after certain lines are uttered, and the fact that it’s a message we have in the flesh rather than the screens that have become our lives that makes me want this to say in the intimacy of live theatre.

Thank you Alice Stanley Jr. for writing this play. It takes bravery to tackle the issue of gun violence, but it takes so much more to take a stand on so many more issues, like class divide, mental health, misogyny, sexism, and our lack of humanity online in one single play without making it feel overboard.

In 50 years time, this will be the play they study in drama schools to understand how we used theatre to address the troubles of our time.

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