Ben
Brantley

February 23, 2015

Beware, America! Sally Wright, a young woman who spends a lot of time with a shotgun in her hands, is having one whale of a nervous breakdown. It is, you might say, a breakdown as big as a whole country, and it’s been building for centuries. Played by Cassie Beck with alarmed eyes that belie her cornfed friendliness, Sally is the central character in The Insurgents, the small but mightily ambitious state-of-the-nation play by Lucy Thurber, which opened on Monday night at the Bank Street Theater. And that shotgun I mentioned? Sally’s going to wind up pointing it right at you. Theatergoers who know Chekhov’s dictum about guns — you know, writers shouldn’t introduce them if they’re not going to shoot them — need not fear for their lives, however. In a prologue to this Labyrinth Theater Company production, the engaging Ms. Beck reassures us that her gun isn’t real and poses no threat to our safety. That is a slightly disingenuous disclaimer. If no violence has occurred by the evening’s end — and this play is mostly all talk — Ms. Thurber still wants us to leave braced for the fire next time. The Insurgents is about a rage that never stops simmering in the home of the free, brave and disenfranchised. And it is achingly, earnestly aware that, as Sally puts it, there’s a fine line in this country between heroism and terrorism.