World War Now or How Seymour Got His Gun Off

World War Now or How Seymour Got His Gun Off, a piercing anti-war satire, is a kind of “Six Characters in Search of an Author” meets “All Quiet on the Western Front.” The piece is a play-within-a-play depicting a world where wars are run to uphold the arms business, but conflicts are limited to World War I armaments, since that was the last “civilized” war. A mother searches the battlefields for her son Seymour, who ran away to enlist, only to find that dead soldiers, including her lad, are ghoulishly scavenging the battlefield for body parts to replace the ones they’ve lost. This frightening development threatens to end war forever, which scares the pants off Governments worldwide. Throughout the piece, most of the main characters talk back to their creator, a novice playwright named Mickey, and willfully re-invent themselves in a Pirandellian fashion. This staged reading is directed by Tom O’Horgan, and stars Ed Asner and Estelle Parsons.