What Happened When the Gun That Was Supposed to Kill Hitler Jammed?

Bullet for Adolf
New World Stages
340 W. 50th Street
New York, NY

Cranky German foreman meets quintessential '80s guy in Bullet for Adolf.

How does history change when a gun jams? Woody Harrelson and Frankie Hyman examine just that in their comedy Bullet for Adolf, set in 1983 Houston.

The play starts with the story of several construction workers, their histories, jobs and women. They work for a boss, Jurgen, in his 60s, who has a thick German accent. There is a lot of comedy in the simple story and hundreds of short videos of what America was like in 1983 flashed on the walls of the stage. Just before the end of the first act, Jurgen throws a birthday party for his daughter Batina. At the party, Jurgen shows the workers his prized historical artifact, a German Luger.

In a hurried and a bit muddled talk, the father explains that in Germany, just before World War II began, several men were going to play Russian roulette with the gun (a very messy prospect with a semi-automatic pistol -- but nobody said that the Nazis were all that smart). But one man, perhaps realizing the ridiculousness of his situation, aimed the gun at Adolf Hitler, who -- evidently having nothing better to do after dismembering Czechoslovakia -- happened to be in the room. But (shocker) the gun jammed. Hitler walked out of the room and the Luger disappeared. A Nazi officer later obtained it and gave it to his son, Jurgen, who took it to Houston.

The bizarre tale kicks off the basic plot of the play. The gun disappears. Jurgen, of course, blames his employees and Houston's finest are called in, screwing up the lives of everyone involved.

The idea is a good one, but the execution is a pretty flat. Barina says that the gun represents Jurgen's dream of another Hitler, a Hitler who went on to do good, not bad. He wants it back because it fulfills him, and his dreams.

Right, sure.

The murky tale of the missing gun is half the play. The real story is that of the construction workers: Zach (Brandon Coffey), Dago-Czech (Lee Osorio) and Frankie (Tyler Jacob Rollinson). There is violence, racism, and of course union trouble (this was the '80s, after all -- unions still existed then, even in Houston). The play, in its own way, is an effort to show that men and women, black, white and Latino, can come together (helped by copious amounts of weed -- this is a Woody Harrelson production, after all). But the story, disoriented and pretty muddle, just doesn’t work very well.

At least the acting is quite quite good. Osorio is especially dynamic as the jumping jack Italian who tries to convince people he's really black. David Coomber plays an eccentric Clint, one of the workers’ roommates. Marsha Stephanie Blake is Shareeta, a psychologist, and Shamika Cotton is Jackie, a job recruiter. Nick Wyman is a sturdy old oak as Jurgen.

The real trouble with the play is that the historical artifact, the gun, seems useless in what is essentially a gigantic shaggy dog story. Anything, even a parking ticket, could have caused all the commotion in the second act, not just a gun that might have killed the most notorious mass murderer who ever lived. Harrelson and Hyman could have really played with the gun idea. Nobody else knew about this gun? Jurgen never tried to sell it? No war investigation commission found it? Jurgen, with a huge picture of his dad in a Nazi uniform on his living room wall, has no Nazi past? Come on. The overall plot, outside the gun, with a lot of ups and downs, doesn't seem to go anywhere. Some of the jokes are very, very funny, but some of them are ghastly. In the dialogue about the gun, someone said that if Hitler had died and not murdered millions of people, Europe would have wound up overpopulated and had problems with that. Ugghh!

Over the years, stories of numerous plots to assassinate Hitler have emerged. The most famous, of course, was the July 20 plot that killed four but did not injure Hitler badly. Von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators were shot (along with many senior generals tangentially or totally uninvolved, including Erwin Rommel). It was one of just several dozen attempts on Hitler’s life. The German leader was sent poisoned letters, fired upon from crowds and nearly bombed. The food at a dinner he attended was poisoned. Two sets of soldiers set up machine gun nests on roadway he was scheduled to travel, but his chauffeur took a different highway.

These plots could have been sewn into the play, with an expanded and more realistic gun plot, and the gun story and entire play would have had more resonance.

PRODUCTION: Produced by New World Stages and Children at Play; Sets: Dane Laffrey; Costumes: Kristy Leigh Hall; Lighting: Jen Schriever; Sound: Brett Jarvis; Projection Design: Imaginary Media; Choreography: Jeffrey Denman; Fight direction: Rick Sordelet. The play was directed by Woody Harrelson.