#EdFringe Review: Bang

Stars: 4/5

Joan Vollmer is bleeding to death, shot in the head by her common law husband as they attempt to re-enact a dangerous party trick. The act of violence is all around us, but also not directly shown. It’s in the name of the show: Bang. It’s in the fragmented, trauma-centred structure. It’s the question: what crimes are forgivable in the name of great art?

For Joan Vollmer is not just any tragic victim. She’s just been shot by the Beat writer, the original Junkie, the venerated William Burroughs. Her death has just become a footnote in a dozen biographies, a pivotal moment in someone else’s story.

Although Vollmer died aged 28, the decision to cast a slightly older actor to play her is a good one. Linda Gaumnitz brings a gravitas to the role that a younger actor might have struggled to portray. She stands barefoot in a floral dress, hair pulled back. “Want to know my last words?” she asks us. Yes. We’re here to hear about her. Bang is Vollmer’s story.

But first, it helps to be familiar with the tale of William Tell. An archer is boasting of his skill, or is envied for it, and is forced to shoot an apple off his own son’s head. In the stories he’s successful and the boy doesn’t die, but the tale is a warning. It’s about endangering those we love and the cruelty of others. It’s about the responsibilities of exceptional talent, the dangers of pride. However, some take it as a challenge. How good a shot are you?

In Bang it serves as a helpful bookend. Why would a young woman, mother of two young children, agree to participate in such a game? We hear of happier times, of successful attempts. “I knew he wouldn’t miss,” she says. She talks of fate and a game of trust in an orchard resulting romantically in “bits of apple all over me”. The implication is that the whole thing was her idea.

And also, context. The times she’d been a psychiatric inpatient. How Burroughs picked her up from one of the hospitals. “It’s a great way to break the ice with guys, having them pick you up from the nuthouse,” she says. She starts and stops her stories, her tone tight and matter of fact, “What’s a girl to do? Why go crazy of course,” “Here’s what I wanted to say at the asylum, but had no-one to say it to.” “The boys. He was always trying to impress them”. The way she accuses him of not being able to shoot straight anymore, but says the words to an empty chair facing an old fashioned typewriter is deeply affecting, though it does draw attention to the unnecessary presence of her bongo playing co-star.

These are the thoughts of a dying woman, but they are also a defiant defence of herself and her life and her choices and her tragedy. She swings an empty glass liquor bottle like a weapon, she sits alone on a too tall chair with her legs dangling like a little girl.

And, expertly, another story is woven in. A story about the responsibility we have for the behaviour of those we call our friends. A story that elevates Bang itself and damns William Burroughs a second time. A story that I don’t want to spoil…

You can tell playwright Dan Born did his research, you can tell he cares about the injustice of Burroughs’ veneration. Born lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where Burroughs spent the last years of his life. With Bang he seeks to provide a “counterweight” to the mythologising of the writer there.

Telling Vollmer’s story, from her perspective, is part of that. “She’s not unknown as a figure, but she’s unknown as a person,” Born says to me outside in the courtyard after the show. He explains that he’s drawn to realism, to character and to historical accuracy and that this version of the play is ten years in the making. We talk about how much can be forgiven in the case of great art. “A lot less than what we could in the past,” says Born, continuing, “In the case of Burroughs I don’t think the art is that overwhelming and the crime is so horrendous. It irritates me on a certain level.” He says that some of his friends didn’t want to see the play because didn’t want to watch yet another work that justifies the writer’s behaviour as part of his supposed genius. But Bang is a counterweight, and a gentle and vital one. Through Bang we see Burroughs through Vollmer’s eyes, and we – hopefully – see her too. Bang is a form of justice for Joan Vollmer and Dan Born and Linda Gaumnitz are to be deeply commended for this. She deserves it.

There’s loads of time to see Bang, it’s on every day at 19.20 until Sunday the 27th at ZOO Playground 2 (Venue 186) with tickets in the £10-15 range depending on day and concession status. tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/bang.

Words: Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne