HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

Rating:
Summary: The Vonnegut on Stage!
Review: Happy Birthday, Wanda June is an anti-b.s. play. Anti-macho nonsense, anti-abuse, anti-syncophant, anti-war mongering, anti-violence, anti-abandonment. All the "living" characters in it are trying to be someone else....except Harold, who is so much himself (or forgone) that his personality is deadly against the others.

This is a very funny, bizarre, timely play. Now, as America is back in a questionable war, as we were when this was written in 1970, and blatant aggression is somehow acceptable here is Vonnegut standing up to show us all how ridiculous we are, and ridiculous just about everyone in the play is.

Harold is single-minded and aggressive enough to not see its effect on others. Penelope, who is lost throughout most of it, is stuck and needs the borishness of Harold to see the error of her ways. Woodly is patently lost in a field of peace, joy and positivity full of rage, but smitten by the myth of manliness. Shuttle is an idol worshiper and caught in an Americana sport/brotherhood fetish. Looseleaf is in a haze of wonder and awe at his past, shocked by his own inhumanity. Paul is angry, needy for a father, but protective like a fatherless child is of his mother. The three "ghosts" are ironic and a hope for us all. Since this world is ridiculous and stupid, belief that the next one is anything but remains a peaceful possibility.

A good play, full of social commentary, Vonnegut's wit and black humor. Recommended, especially in this day in age, and for Vonnegut fans.

Rating:
Summary: wanda june, how do i love thee? let me count the ways....
Review: Learn to spell 'quit' before you go off insulting Kurt Vonnegut's wonderful "Happy Birthday Wanda June". If you are intereted in the opinion of a true die-hard Vonnegut fan, take it from me-this play is excellent. It is everything that one would not expect out of a play by anyone other than Vonnegut.

If you are a theatre person like myself, take my advice that this play has got to be one of the most outrageous and humorous around. It'd be extremely fun to produce (especially in a high school or small community theatre setting). This play is definately worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Superb Play! Even Better Characters!
Review: This has to be one of the most interesting plays I've ever read! I am currently doing a monolouge from the play, Wanda June's, and I believe that the characters is this play are absolutely hilarious! What kind of genius would put an happy and slightly dumb half-witted ex-bomber, a dead 10-year old girl who was killed by a drunk ice-cream truck driver, a talented violinist-doctor, and a animal hunting, taxadermy-happy explorer into one brilliant play? I give it 6 out of 5 stars!

Rating:
Summary: Classic Vonnegut
Review: Vonnegut is typically bizarre. It's his style. In the books of his I've read I notice a lot of fiddle-diddling around until the last 30 pages of the book. Happy Birthday, Wanda June isn't quite like that. I found it to be a kind of... portrait of the stereotypical Americans. First of all, there's the mother, Penelope, who lives an insipid existence with her son and two suitors -- she doesn't do much, and has little character (as most Vonnegut women do). Her son, Paul, is pressured into growing into a chauvinist, like Herb Shuttle, one of Penelope's suitors. Herb is a prolific athlete who knows nothing of science or any form of literature other than Sports Illustrated. Norbert Woodly is a "hippie-ish" doctor who plays the violin, and is Penelope's other suitor -- to say the least, Woodly and Shuttle despise each other. Penelope's house is filled with animal skins and taxadermy creatures her husband, Harold, killed while scrounging through various jungles (Woodly: Throw out all this junk. Burn it! This room crawls with tropical disease.), along with jungle-theme doorbells they aparently acquired from Abercrombie and Fitch.

It's a short play, quite darling, and full of enlightening perspectives (mainly in the arguments between Woodly and Harold or Shuttle). By the end, it leaves you looking at people in a different light, wondering under which category-of-character-persona they would fit under.

Rating:
Summary: a disappointment after Cat's Cradle and other masterpieces
Review: Written in 1970 or so, I think this one is a good example of how opinionated people really need to disguise their personal opinions better in order to keep a story interesting. That doesn't mean you can't express your opinion; you just have to be subtle about it. Vonnegut is better at this in some of his other writing.

One of the characters is a one-dimensional brute (possibly based on Ernest Hemingway) who treats his wife and son as things and has filled his house with taxedermised animals he has killed. The other characters are similarly simplistic, and the plot is even weaker. In fact, it's difficult to believe that the same person who wrote this play is also the author of such classic literature as Cat's Cradle.

Rating:
Summary: The scenes in Heaven are semi-amusing
Review: Ya know what I really hate about The Von? (Besides everything.) It's his constant harping on his midwestern innocence. Or on Marsha Mason's midwestern innocence. *What* innocence? It doesn't exist outside of his own head. But The Von is too smugly solipsistic to realize it. He & Marsha are almost as insufferable as Holden Caulfield and his precious baby sister.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad The Von survived Dresden. (SOMEBODY had to.) But his boring bleeding-heart Jesus-mongering really drives me up the wall when it's coming from a goddam atheist. (Either believe or get off the pot, Kurt. You remind me too much of that atheist nun at the end of WHITE NOISE.)

Where the hell was I. Oh yeah. Have you ever wondered why the Germans constantly put verbs at the end of sentences instead of in the middle of sentences where they belong? It's an expression of German machismo. Germans think that it's macho to do everything the hard way. This trait gets mentioned in WANDA JUNE.

Major Siegfried von Konigswald says: "Harold Ryan said he killed maybe 200 guys. I killed a hundred times that many, I bet. That's still peanuts, of course, compared to what that crazy Looseleaf did. Harold and me---we was doing it the hard way. I hope the record books will show that. There should be a little star or something by the names of the guys who did it the hard way."