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Iain Murray
Jemima Phillips
and Antonia Kitzel in Heaven
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HAPPY Birthday Wanda June was written by Kurt Vonnegut in America's
post-Vietnam period, which puts it in the crude early days of contemporary
feminism, broad-brush pacifism, environmentalism, save-the-whale- and several
other -isms, some of which have matured and others of which have been overtaken.
It is, therefore, a somewhat earnest piece of polemic recalling, but not
surpassing, the didactic use to which George Bernard Shaw and other moralists
put the theatre.
It tells, in a rather fractured way, the story of the Hemingway-like figure
of Harold Ryan, returning after 10 years from masochistic adventures in various
jungles to reclaim his rightful place as the commanding head of his family –
wife Penelope (remember Mrs Odysseus?) and their son – and to scourge the family
apartment of a couple of wimpish suitors. He also links up with a broken
ex-commanding officer from his Vietnam days. Among all this real-time action
Vonnegut gives us some odd glimpses, in Heaven, of the Wanda June of the title,
a bewildered German major, and a puzzling survivor of Vonnegut's WW2 days.
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| Michael Sparks and Jess Waterhouse |
This, undoubtedly, is not one of Vonnegut's better works: is it pastoral,
historical, comical, farcical, comical-historical, moral? Or is it a bit of all
of that? And does it need to be one or the other, if it is as well-done as in
this production?
The set is an impressive recreation of the times – garish wall-paper,
lava-lamp and glowing fibre-glass 'sculpture', tropical fernery – and then there
are the gruesome trophy heads looming over all. All involved in the realisation
of the 1960s apartment – lighting, sound, decoration, deserve a tick, the
biggest of which goes to the trophy heads, designed by Cate Clelland and created by Russell Brown
and Andrew Kay.
Cate Clelland has had the luxury of casting as fine a crew of actors as you
could wish for in an amateur production. Without a Harold Ryan to dominate the
show, this play would be greatly diminished, and Michael Sparks meets the
demands of playing an absolutely detestable bastard with aplomb while Jess
Waterhouse, despite Penelope's pre-PC leopard-skin coat, gives him as well as
she gets while attending to the demands of the nouveau PC-class Rowan McMurray (the inept vacuum-cleaner salesman Herbert
Shuttle) and Peter Holland
(Dr Norbert Woodly) – not to forget the 13-yo Nick Dyball's confident portrayal of a really
confused teen (Paul Ryan) defended by – and defending – a loving mother and
caught between three potential male role-models.
David Bennett's representation of the guilt-rapt, febrile, pre-dementia
Colonel Looseleaf Harper creates a believable and compassionate foil to Harold
Ryan's absolutism.
For light relief we need go no further than Jemima Phillips as the
delightful goody-two-shoes/Pippi Longstocking Wanda June and the Hogan's Heroes
caricature Iain Murray makes of Major Siegfried von Konigswald. Antonia Kitzel
makes her reliable mark in a late-entrance appearance in Heaven as Mildred
Harper, although it's never clear what these characters have to do with any part
of the plot.
As a recently-returned prodigal, I have seen no better example of Cate
Clelland's direction and I'm so glad Rep chose this flawed play at this time;
dated as it may be, it shows us in a highly engaging and entertaining way that
today's Trumped-up 'America-first', misogynistic world view has deep
roots.
