Happy Birthday, Wanda June

Synopsis

It's America in the 1960s and Harold Ryan, the famous war-hero, has been missing for eight years. Presumed dead, he returns in secret to discover his house is not exactly as he left it. His hunting trophies still adorn the walls, but there is an inexplicable birthday cake on the table. Worse yet, his son has grown into a sissy and his wife is engaged to a hippy.

Our Review:

Rebecca Hussein - 2 November 2012

With its comedy doorbell and tendency to act as a platform for strange and surreal guests such as a Nazi officer and a poor little dead girl, Happy Birthday Wanda June almost gives the impression of a 1960s sitcom, stepped out of the black and white television set and into reality. And yet despite the sometime bizarre, and often very funny cameos, performances such as Vincent Jerome’s Harold Ryan convey a real sense of menace and aggression constantly bubbling under the surface of this nostalgic America. For through characters such as Harold, a hunter and soldier returned home after eight years in the wilderness, Kurt Vonnegut’s only play explores the ever changing face of masculinity in a post war world that has seemingly put down its weapons.

These ideas of masculinity are fantastically conveyed by director Ant Stones, in fine details such casting every male character before Harold’s arrival as female. It seems that, in Harold’s absence...

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