On the cover of the program, a girl in pigtails is wearing a happy birthday paper hat posed with a rifle in her hand in front of green balloons. Presumably she is the titular character in Happy Birthday, Wanda June, a play by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Originally produced off-Broadway in 1970, Mr. Vonnegut was at the height of his fame having just written Slaughterhouse Five. This play about a bombastic war hero who glistens with violence and oozes Neanderthal levels of testosterone had to speak loudly to the burgeoning anti-war sentiment in America at the time.
Almost fifty years later the play speaks as loudly but differently. The plot here is loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey. Harold Ryan is a decorated war hero having killed more than 200 people and countless animals for sport. He and his buddy (the man who dropped the bomb on Nagasaki) travelled to the Amazon Rainforest in search of diamonds but are now missing for eight years. His wife, similarly named Penelope, and their twelve year old son have been waiting in an unchanged home. Taxidermied heads on the walls. The son hopes for dad’s return. The wife is juggling suitors.
Mr. Vonnegut’s messaging here was directly addressing the violence of men and warmongering. In 2018, the play miraculously appropriates the Trump era and enriches this wildly absurdist dark comedy. When Harold returns, we meet a raging egomaniac. His third, much younger wife has grown significantly between 1962 and 1970. She is now educated. He says that educating women is akin to pouring honey on a Swiss watch. They both don’t work. Gargantuan brutishness and bluster with a complete lack of self-awareness dominates this character’s revoltingly hilarious persona.
In a tiny off-off Broadway theater, Wheelhouse Theater Company has blasted a home run out of the park. Jason O’Connell plays Harold Ryan. The performance is a combustible combination of star turn and train wreck resulting in one of this year’s most exciting actor/character matches to appear on any New York stage. The creative team excelled at striking the right tone visually and in words. Jeff Wise, a founding member of this company, confidently directed and cast Happy Birthday, Wanda June. All of the actors were excellent, nicely balanced between convincing and cartoonish. Brittany Vasta’s scenic design and Christopher Metzger’s costumes were spot on, complementing the period and riffing on the absurdity of the situations.
Is the play a bit creaky and old? Not a chance of coming to that conclusion with this production. Blogging multiple times a week, I see a lot of theater. Sometimes you take a shot and hit the bulls-eye. When that happens, you remember the company’s name, Wheelhouse, and you commit to seeing their next project. Happy Birthday, Wanda June is one of the best surprises of my theatergoing year.