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... it with a rifle unless he’s the next Annie Oakley, and if he did it with a deer rifle there wouldn’t be much goose left. But, what, you’re worried about plausibility in a show called Batboy?

The Bear

These lines get some people a little confused. Smirnov has not brought out any Mortimer pistols. He’s not saying that there are Mortimer pistols in his hands, but that in the world there exist several types of guns. He starts off talking about pistols in general, and tosses out the term in a vain show of knowledge in order to impress the young lady. [A Mortimer pistol was a very distinctive single-shot percussion pistol that was in fact designed for target shooting, never for duels.] What he has brought out are two identical revolvers.

The specific guns that we do see are described as being Smith and Wesson and having certain attributes - triple action, and having an integrated ejection rod ("extractors"). Triple action in this case refers to the mechanical-action capability of the hammer and its interplay with the trigger, and the audience is never going to see that. Neither can Smirnov, because it is not something that can be seen. He is either bluffing about his knowledge or he really is a minor expert in guns and their attributes. Be that as it may, the only part of the full description that is visible is the ejection/extractor rod. It’s the part of Western style guns that looks like a thin barrel riding underneath the regular gun barrel, but is actually a push rod that allows the user to push out the spent brass cartridges from the cylinder after the gun is fired. It is a small detail that very few in the audience will know about, so if your prop gun doesn’t have one, I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it. As for them being Smith and Wesson, the company made over a dozen distinct revolvers during this period, and the description in the script gives no indication of what the profile of the gun looks like, so you have a good chance that whatever gun you find will look like one of the Smith and Wesson’s from the turn of the century.

[In another of his works, a short story that takes place in a gun shop, Chekhov uses the same two gun references. Apparently, he had picked up these two bits of information somehow, and used them in his writing when he had the chance. They seem to be the sum of his gun knowledge.]

Big River

see Tom Sawyer

Brigadoon

With the exception of anglicized nobles in the 17th and 18th centuries, Scots never wore the sword off of the battlefield, but that won’t stop directors from wanting many in the cast to wear them. And of course you’ll need some swords for the sword dance. But which sword? The unmanageable two handed Claymore or the basket hilt single hand sword of the 17th century? As the time period for this show is fantasy, the weaponry choices for the Highland dance can be anything you want. The costuming suggests using traditional Scottish swords, but I’ve noticed that even modern Highland dancers from Scotland don’t use Scottish swords when they perform or compete. Scottish two-handed broadswords (Claymores) with their very long and broad blades are simply too large to carry or dance over. Single-handed basket hilts swords are more manageable, but the three-dimensional hilts lift one side of the blades up from the floor by a couple of inches. Dancers can easily catch their toes on the ...