Armed with Belief: A Review of and her Children

​Political image, personal loss, and public reckoning collide in and her Children as The Attic Collective returns to the Hollywood Fringe with their most powerful work yet. Hailey McAfee transforms as an NRA spokesperson caught in a surreal unraveling, delivering an award-worthy performance that anchors this bold, emotionally devastating production. Under Rosie Glen-Lambert’s precise direction, the team crafts an unforgettable theatrical experience that confronts challenges and lingers long after the curtain falls.

Making its world premiere at this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival, and her Children marks The Attic Collective’s return with perhaps their most haunting and accomplished work yet. Staged at the Hobgoblin Playhouse, a black box in the heart of Hollywood, the production thrives in the venue’s intimacy. Over 80 minutes filled with tension, sorrow, and precision, the show pulls us in from its first breath. Once it sets you in its crosshairs, there’s no looking away.

This production doesn’t just raise the bar from the company’s past works (Iphigenia in Splott, Hedda Gabler, The Last Croissant); it clears the chamber, reloads, and fires with devastating clarity.

The production unfolds in a suspended reality, a moment frozen in time: part press conference or perhaps a final opportunity to explain and justify oneself. At the center is Anna Fierling, played with extraordinary control by Hailey McAfee. She steps onstage composed and camera-ready, her blonde hair perfectly done, dressed in a robin’s egg blue power suit adorned with a glimmering gold cross. She’s media-trained and used to silencing rooms. Modeled in part on NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch, Anna has spent her career defending not just guns but the sanctity of the Second Amendment.

Anyone lucky enough to have seen the chameleon-like wonder that McAfee knows what she can do, but here, she truly outdoes herself. She transforms into a picture-perfect spokesperson: media-savvy, polished, impenetrable. From the moment she enters, she holds the audience in the palm of her hand. Her delivery is clean and calculated, her charm effortless. But there are flickers of vulnerability: a smile that slips, a breath that catches, a crack in the armor before it resets. Those fleeting moments are where the heartbreak begins to seep through.

As the play unfolds, we’re given glimpses into Anna’s personal life: her childhood, her early motherhood, and her rise from journalist to media figure. Eventually, she became a spokesperson for the NRA, tasked with defending their image to the public. These details don’t excuse her; they provide context for her. We begin to understand how policy and politics have shaped the woman before us.

We also learn about her children: Eli, Kat, and Sawyer. Though they never appear onstage, McAfee brings them vividly to life through memory and detail. We come to know their quirks, their intelligence, their fears. Slowly, their lives begin to echo the broader national crisis around them. Even in their absence, they become the emotional center of the play.

The story reveals itself slowly, layer by layer. Anna speaks directly to us, sometimes calmly, sometimes with urgency, sometimes with well-rehearsed conviction. We’re left to sift through what is genuine, what is deflection, and what is slipping through the cracks. The whole truth of what she has lost doesn’t arrive until late in the play, and when it does, the silence in the room is profound.

What makes and her Children so powerful is its refusal to let the audience off the hook. Anna is not a caricature. She is eloquent, persuasive, deeply complicit, and still, somehow, resilient. Despite everything, the audience can’t help but root for her. I found myself leaning in, drawn to her poise and discipline. Then I caught myself, unsettled by how easily I wanted her to win. That tension is part of the brilliance. We are not asked to hate her. We are asked to sit in the contradiction.

Director Rosie Glen-Lambert’s guidance is laser-focused, coaxing out moments of humor and levity even during the most intense scenes. It never feels satirical or distracting, and it never pulls attention away from the performance. One of her most powerful choices is the presence of a live violinist seated quietly onstage from the beginning, bow in hand, back turned. The music performed by Ilana Waniuk, becomes a second voice. It pulses beneath Anna’s dialogue, sometimes echoing her grief, sometimes interrupting it, and sometimes guiding it to a deeper place. The effect is haunting and unforgettable.

The design is minimal but effective: a podium, a screen, and a single chair. Shifts in lighting mark emotional transitions. Anna’s curated appearance becomes part of the story itself. Even her posture tells us something. But as the show progresses, that polish begins to fray. Credit is once again due to the costume and makeup design, which support her transformation without ever overshadowing it. It could be very easy to create a caricature of Anna, but it never feels that way. 

McAfee understands that control is the character’s weapon and her wound. She never pleads, never grandstands. Her stillness is a kind of power in itself. And when she finally cracks, then recovers, smiling through the wreckage and putting it back on as a kind of armor, it is one of the most impressively nuanced performances I’ve seen. By the conclusion, the full extent of Anna’s loss is revealed. And it sits heavy. This is the kind of art that leaves you uncomfortable and lingers long after you’ve left the theater.

At the time of this review, this production has completely sold out its Hollywood Fringe run. But fear not. The team has begun waitlisting audience members, and I strongly recommend signing up or keeping an eye out for any encore performances. Los Angeles is just the beginning of this incredible show. If it comes to a city near you, it is not to be missed.

According to a 2022 CDC report, firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States. In the past decade, there have been more than 300 school shootings, and tens of thousands of children have been exposed to gun violence. and her Children doesn’t need to cite the numbers. They are now part of the status quo. We’ve become so numb that it feels routine, another headline, another news article, another statistic to be ignored. The horror is not in what is said. It is in how easy it has become to look away.

This isn’t theater as a lecture. Or catharsis. It is confrontation. In a country where belief in the Second Amendment is treated as sacred, and her Children dares to ask: What happens when that belief becomes the barrel you can’t stop looking down?

Location: Hobgoblin Playhouse (Black Box)
6468 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038

Tickets & waitlist: Available via here

Featuring:
Hailey McAfee as Anna Fierling
Ilana Waniuk as The Violinist

Production Team:
Rosie Glen-Lambert – Director / Co-Writer
Hailey McAfee – Performer / Co-Writer
Padra Crisafulli – Sound Design
Russell Chow – Lighting Design
Mallory McAfee – Makeup & Costume Design
Abi Hood – Assistant Director