Kurt Vonnegut isn't really known as a playwright - his one play, "Happy Birthday Wanda June" had a short run off-broadway in 1970-71 (and a 6 week revival this year, again off-broadway), was turned into a barely remembered film and then disappeared into the collection of "also wrote a play" alongside those by authors like David Malouf, Thomas Keneally, Henry James and Doris Lessing - a literary curio rather than a perennial. Still, someone's decided to put this on stage anyway so here it is.
It's a very 70's mix of broad comedy and drama, dealing with what nowdays we call "toxic masculinity", as the missing-presumed-dead Great White Hunter Harold Ryan returns home to his wife only to discover she has got educated and has acquired two new suitors - a peace-loving doctor and a somewhat more brutish vacuum salesman. While his son celebrates his return, his wife feels inclined to do so, and it quickly becomes clear Harold may have been better left for dead...
This is a bit of a mess - Vonnegut's dialogue doesn't always sit comfortably with actors, and the play is far more interested in bringing up a bunch of interesting themes than in consistently addressing and resolving them in any conventional dramatic way. Still, it comes alive in moments, whether it be letting Ryan off the cuff to be fully monstrous, or in the portrayals of a distinctly amoral afterlife.
Michael Sparks as Ryan hasn't let the fact he's in a less-than-great play stop him from giving a great performance anyway - his satanically bearded Ryan is a bombastic, destructive creature but damn if he's not interesting to watch. Part of the problem with the play, in fact, is that nobody really gets to solidly stand toe-to-toe with Ryan until near the end, and even there, it's the wrong goddamn character doing the toe-to-toe-ness (Penelope, who does the opening narration, clearly should be the one to fully combat him, but after some great set-up, she never really gets a moment to cut loose). The three afterlife characters are also presented with a lot of strength (although frustratingly they never quite connect with the main plot of the play - they seem more like interesting diversions than actual plot development) - Jemima Phillips' polyanna-ish Wanda June, Iain Murray's offhandedly sardonic Major Sigfried von Knoisburg and Antoina Kitzl's drunkenly unimpressed Mildred liven up the action considerably. There's also quite a solid performance from young Nick Dyball as Ryan's son, a realistically moody kid who sustains our interest (and who would also have been an interesting choice to deal his father the final blow - can you tell I really found the ending flat?). Jess Waterhouse is most interesting when the script is giving her things to do in the first third-or-so of the play - once Harold arrives the script leaves this charming clever sophisticate and gives her very little to do except hide from her husband. David Bennett as Ryan's fellow-returnee-from-the-jungle lends a bit of entertaining side-play but, yet again, what he has doesn't quite add up to enough to justify the time spent.
Cate Clelland's production gives this as much pace and cartoonish joy as it possibly can take, including some great retro-design both in set (Clelland) and costumes (Helen Wotjas). I just wish that all this skill was dedicated to a better play.
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