LCA Theatre Presents: Marjor Barbara

By Matt Fong

 

The play starts out introducing a family that relies on the money that comes from their father, 

 

who left the family since the children were young. The family regularly relies on money that 

 

comes from the father and needs more as two of the daughters are expecting to be married soon. 

 

There’s only one catch: the father manufactures cannons. Morally, the family doesn’t accept the 

 

money, but they need it in order to maintain their way of life.

 

One of the daughters, Barbara (Brianna Aguilar ’15), offers a wager to her father (Will Stinson 

 

’15). In exchange for visiting him at his cannon factory and learning about his “religion” of gun-

 

making, she wants him to visit the Salvation Army, where she can teach him about the faith she 

 

developed there. At the shelter, the act starts out with the bully (James Palmer ’16) terrorizing 

 

the ladies in the shelter, drastically different from the family banter in the first act. Barbara 

 

attempts to save him, but her attempts prove different when a whiskey maker offers money and 

 

her father pays the army money: money he earned from making cannons. Barbara, faith torn and 

 

shocked at the shelter’s decision to accept the money, rejects the Army and quits. At this point in 

 

the production, the audience sees that her father has won. 

 

But in the third act things change drastically. The family is brought to see the factory and their 

 

opinion dramatically changes from resenting the factory to wanting it. The factory is painted as a 

 

bright modern industry and the family turns back their thoughts on the factory. Though Barbara 

 

herself lost faith in the Salvation Army, she sees a better way to spread her faith; she is going to

 

spread it to the belligerents who work at her father’s factory. 

 

This play was very well done by the actors and everything seemed to go smoothly for them. The 

 

only issue I would say would be the background surrounding the play: the naming of the 

 

characters, the details regarding little things in the scene, like money being stolen in the 

 

Salvation shelter, or lighting a cigarette in an explosives shed. However, there were people who 

 

understood what was happening, so it obviously deserves some merit that these things are being 

 

shown.