New City's 'Roseburg': The dream of gun control, in 1968 - and now

The New City Stage Company's Roseburg, running through July 31 at the Adrienne Theater Second Stage, is a play about gun control, set in the 1960s, when great figures are being assassinated and Stokely Carmichael, ironically a former leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is encouraging the disenfranchised and marginalized to take up arms. It is a fever dream of political theater, and its timeliness is eerily unsettling.

Ginger Dayle writes and directs, with Russ Widdall acting as Bobby Kennedy (as he did in New City's RFK) and the Voices for a New City Ensemble breathing youthful contemporary sensibilities into a stirring play. It's set in Oregon and California in the late spring of 1968, as well as the summer of 2015 in a quiet town near Roseburg, Ore., close to the site of the brutal October 2015 killings at Umpqua Community College. In fact, one of President Obama's most memorable White House addresses after a mass shooting - sadly, one of many we've heard now - plays a central and dramatic part in the play's conclusion.

Roseburg is compellingly busy. We see CNN footage after shootings, montages of gun nuts shooting at targets, segments from speeches, rallies full of shouting citizens. Each cast member plays multiple parts, with Widdall playing a grief counselor at the beginning, talking to friends of the deceased after the Umpqua shootings. It works. Widdall as Kennedy is devoted to domestic issues in the Vietnam era. His advisers and campaign leader tell him to talk about international peace, but RFK wants to talk about guns and racial equality. He is booed and picketed, loudly.

There are lots of monologues, a couple perhaps too long, but the movements both for and against gun control get fair and adequate airtime. The play overall is on the side of reasonable gun control.

After the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson is able to pass a modicum of gun control: restrictions for the criminally insane and youth as well as a five-day wait. Roseburg addresses issues that still are holding American hearts and minds hostage, in 2016 as in 1968.

Through July 31 at the Adrienne Theater Second Stage, 2030 Sansom St. Tickets: $10-$30. Information: 866-811-4111 or newcitystage.org.