Press & News: What Other's Got to Say
The Good, the Bad, and the Promising...but, pretty much, Really Good!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE
Written by Kurt Vonnegut
April 5, 2004: Curtain Up, Review
Reviewed by Jenny Sandman
For my money, Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, second only to Einstein and Matt Groening. Slaughterhouse-5, Breakfast of Champions, and Welcome to the Monkey House are some of the most insolent, thought-provoking and deeply, strangely funny novels in the English language. His only play, Happy Birthday, Wanda June, opened on Broadway in 1970 and ran for 96 performances. It's prototypical Vonnegut, but is rarely done these days, all the more reason to see 7th Sign's production of it now playing at the Access Theatre.
Written as a protest against Vietnam, Happy Birthday, Wanda June centers around the conflict in the Ryan family. Harold Ryan, a warmongering career soldier and hunter, has been lost in the Amazon for eight years. When he suddenly returns home, long after being declared legally dead, he finds his wife Penelope dating a vacuum cleaner salesman and a peacenik doctor. His twelve-year-old son Paul is deeply confused. He wants so badly to worship his father, but he swiftly realizes (along with the rest of us) that Harold is a brute. At one point, when he asks for breakfast, and Penelope tells him the cook has quit, he replies, "You're a woman, aren't you? We already got a cook!" He destroys the doctor's 200-year-old violin in a fit of pique and treats his so-called best friend with outright contempt. In the midst of this household war, we realize those most hungry for war and destruction are those most afraid of what's going on inside.
Vonnegut, who often writes about war's worst atrocities (most notably the firebombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse-5), took a somewhat underhanded approach in this play. It's a clever look at the nature of war and the trained inhumanity of soldiers, but it's much funnier than it sounds.
The sharp satire that is the author's trademark is embodied in a number of scenes that take place in heaven. Little Wanda June, a ten-year-old girl, tells us about heaven ("We play shuffleboard all the time!") while frolicking with Harold's most famous victim, Von Konigswald, the Beast of Yugoslavia. The Beast and Wanda June play together in heaven, forming the Harold Ryan Fan Club, and offer running commentary on the state of the Ryan household and on Harold's eventual meltdown.
The cast is terrific--especially James M. Saidy as Harold and Jake Thomas as Looseleaf, his erstwhile best friend. Looseleaf's aw-shucks approach to life is no match for Harold's testosterone-driven personality, but Thomas is a strong enough actor in his own right to stand up to Saidy. Jill Frutkin as Wanda June and Brian Hastert as Von Konigswald steal the show--more than comic relief, these are characters in their own right.
The ingenious set highlights the central characters' feelings of isolation. The living room is built on an island of animal bones and bedecked with animal skulls, while the dispatches from heaven take place all around the "house." Director Rachel Chavkin makes full use of both the space and the feelings of isolation, as well as the underlying absurdity of the story. At one point, The Beast of Yugoslavia and Wanda June lead the cast in a lip-synched musical number.
7th Sign's production is subtle enough not to overpower Vonnegut's humor, but strong enough to do it justice. there may not be another chance to see Happy Birthday, Wanda June for a long time. Don't miss this chance to see this funny, well cast playwhile it lasts.
April 2, 2004: Theatermania, Vonnegut Talk-Back Article
Written by David Finkle
In a rare appearance, novelist Kurt Vonnegut took the stage of the Access Theatre for a talk-back session immediately after the April 1 performance of his only play, Happy Birthday, Wanda June.
His own harshest critic, the 81-year-old author commented that the Vietnam-era update of Homer's Odyssey was "overwritten in spots." (In both Homer's epic and Vonnegut's less-than-epic, a warrior returns home to face problems with his wife, her suitors, and his son.) He went on to say that, while he was "charmed" by the 7th Sign production, his play "does seem dated in some ways" and "I would like to have changed a lot." When asked by director Rachel Chavkin (who emceed with actor and 7th Sign co-founder Jake Thomas) what he would change, Vonnegut said with a laugh, "None of your business."
Addressing an audience populated primarily by young theatergoers who may not even have been born while American soldiers were still in Vietnam, Vonnegut spoke readily about what was clearly the real reason for the chat: an interest evinced by the 7th Sign organizers in how relevant Vonnegut considered his 1970 work to the current U.S. invasion of Iraq. The impression that the revered author gave was that he considered the "purposelessness" of both undertakings to be comparable. He seemed to reveal discontent with the current administration when he talked more or less in the abstract about the formation of an "oligarchy that might have to lie to keep the 'know-nothings' under control." He pointed out that, in the next election, voters get to choose between two members of the Yale secret society Skull and Bones. "I worry about Yale," he said as a smile crossed his famously craggy face.
Vonnegut, who sat on his chair as if impersonating a pretzel, talked on broader subjects as well. About contemporary script authorship, he said that he's become impressed with the concept of "team-writing" for television. Suggesting that this is the wave of the future, he praised the method for allowing writers to delve "deeper into subjects than used to be done in Broadway plays years ago."
Despite mentioning the rewrites he'd do on Happy Birthday, Wanda June, Vonnegut remarked that the 1970 production would "still be playing today" were it not for an Off-Broadway strike that closed theaters including the Edison, where his piece opened and ran for 96 performances. He characterized the audiences then as being "in full sympathy" with the play's tenets. On the other hand, Vonnegut also said of his foray into playwriting that he "didn't expect it to be produced" in the first place. Over the years, he said, he's had people speculate that the work's protagonist, Harold Ryan, is a version of Ernest Hemingway. While Vonnegut admitted that he saw a resemblance, he insisted that the blustery Hemingway was not a model for the character. Asked to discuss the villainous Ryan at greater length, he noted that he's said in the past that there are no villains in his work but now remarked: "Often, I'm full of shit." The confession was in keeping with his overall affability, which lasted through a series of questions from the audience. Finally, he did say that he was ready to go home.
Audience members responded to Vonnegut with the same enthusiasm that they'd shown his play. The revival will play through April 18.
April 7, 2004: Electronic Link Journey, Review
Reviewed by Kessa De Santis
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE is one of those deservedly noted plays that any theater buff, and certainly any theater professional, should experience. Written during the Vietnam War/Age of Aquarius, Vonnegut’s satirical look at the modern life and mores of the then and gone resonates and translates oh so well to the Gulf War/Age of Electronica here and now.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s play centers around the unexpected return, after eight years, of the warmonger and recently officially declared dead Harold Ryan. An out of step Odysseus come home to roost among the converts of the Love Generation, Ryan returns to find his wife, Penelope, being courted by two men, and his son, Paul, experiencing growing pains and mounting angst. Setting off the social debate that is at the very core of WANDA JUNE, the contrasts of peace versus violence as moral choices are drawn in broad strokes, as the characters are more representations of points of view than they are archetypes.
With some very minor exceptions, this production of HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE not only works, it works well. Where it could use a push is in the interpretation, or perhaps even the understanding of the ironic content, as some scenes were not played to their fullest potential. This was not the case at all whenever Wanda June (a boisterous Jill Frutkin) and Major Siegfried Von Konigswald (a bemused Brian Hastert) were onstage as virtual visitors from the shuffleboard and Ferris wheel filled afterlife. These two, full of giddy exuberance bounced all about the set, adding heaping doses of unbridled humor that carefully counterbalanced the satire being played by the angry Harold Ryan (James M. Saidy) and the torn Colonel Looseleaf Harper (Jake Thomas).
In terms of production values, The 7th Sign, led by the direction of Rachel Chavkin, has done an admirable job in bringing things together. The action never stops, even during intermission, as the actors remained on the set and in character engaging in various non-scripted acts of stage business. Add to the mix some good costumes, effective lighting and sound effects, and a set that makes the most of a very limited space, and anyone would have to admit that this revival of HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE is nothing if not ambitious.
That Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s script remains timely in spite of what could be some very dated material is reason enough to see a play like HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE. It has stood the test of time. As presented here, it is also something interesting and entertaining to watch.
April 8, 2004: The Onion, Complimentary Listing
This Kurt Vonnegut-penned satire about a war hero and a pacifist was originally produced on Broadway in 1970. The revival is considerably more stripped-down, but no less powerful.
April 8, 2004: Gay City News, Article on the Vonnegut Talk-back
Written by Jerry Tallmer
Harold Ryan, who has been off to war for seven years, killing everything in his gun sight just for the hell of it—103 kills by macho Harold’s own count—has come home at long last to his wife Penelope, who is not at all thrilled to see him, nor are the two suitors who have been hanging around, tongues hanging out: Dr. Norbert Woodly, a peace-loving thoughtful type, and Herb Shuttle, a vacuum-cleaner salesman.
Blustering Harold has brought with him—and is now trying to get rid of—a combat buddy, Colonel Looseleaf Harper, the pilot of the plane that dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki. Looseleaf’s mother-in-law dropped dead when she opened the door and he said, “Guess who?”
“That’s civilization for you,” moans traumatized Looseleaf. “Who knows what kills anybody?... First Nagasaki, now this.”
Which will give you an idea of the tenor of “Happy Birthday, Wanda June,” the only play—or in any event the only published play—by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the author whose powerful, apocalyptic novels (“Slaughterhouse 5,” “Cat’s Cradle,” “Breakfast of Champions”) have walloped the imaginations of several generations of readers.
“Wanda June” doesn’t often get produced. In 1970, it had a run at the De Lys and Edison theaters until knocked off the boards by a citywide actors’ strike. In 1971, it became a movie—“an awful movie,” Vonnegut said.
But now, and through April 18, it is being performed by a gallant company of quite good actors in the tiny Access Theater on the 4th floor of 380 Broadway, two blocks below Canal Street, and playwright Vonnegut was there to take in the show and afterward answer questions on opening night.
If the name Penelope rings a bell, that’s because it was also the name of the good and faithful wife of Odysseus, who preserved her chastity by sticking to her knitting for all seven years her husband was off helping to topple the towers of Troy, before combating monsters and maidens on the long voyage home.
The sharpest reaction from the audience during “Wanda June” was the gasp/snort at the returning warrior Harold’s line: “Educating a woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch. Everything stops.”
When Jake Thomas, aka Colonel Looseleaf Harper, led off the questioning by asking Vonnegut “how this play came about, where the idea came from,” the guest of the evening said, well, 40 years ago it had just seemed to him “preposterous…ridiculous,” that “Penelope should have no love life” all those years that Odysseus was away.
People used to ask him, Vonnegut said, whether the blowhard, kill-loving Harold Ryan was based on Ernest Hemingway. “My response is that though Hemingway was a bully and a braggart, he only shot one person.” Two beats. “Himself.” To be sure, Vonnegut added, “in ‘The Green Hills of Africa’ he boasts of having shot three lions in one day.”
The Harold Ryan of this production is the energetic James M. Saidy. Penelope is the intense, desirable Shannon Riley, Rachel Chavkin’s direction vaults over limited resources with considerable imagination, though also at utmost decibel count by all concerned.
Suitors Woodly and Shuttle are Daniel Deferrari and Andre Kahrl. Brian Hastert has fun with Major Siegfried Von Konigswald, “the Beast of Jugoslavia.” Charlie Wilson plays Ryan unfortunate young son, Liz Parker his even more unfortunate ex-wife. But the most vivid performance of all is by pent-up, fantastic, explosive Jill Frutkin as the 10-year-old Wanda June whose birthday it is as she wanders between afterlife and life in this hell on earth where one lone package dropped by Looseleaf Harper has wiped out 74,000 people (or maybe twice that) in a flash.
Vonnegut thanked the players for their “charming performance.” He mentioned the stars of the 1970 production—Kevin McCarthy, William Hickey, Marsha Mason (“then unknown”).
In 1970, of course, as well as the few years earlier when Vonnegut must have been writing “Happy Birthday, Wanda June,” the United States was deep in the coils of Vietnam.
“Vietnam was a terrible mistake,” said Vonnegut, noting that one member of the audience—his wife, photographer/writer Jill Krementz—had done a book about it (“The Face of South Vietnam,” by her and Dean Brelis, 1968). “In the end, we got kicked out.” Short pause. “Nevermind where we are now.”
He mentioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “talk of how ‘Americans don’t have the stomach for casualties’”—citing that remark, though neither Vonnegut nor anyone else in the room could have known that only some later the photos of two burned and mutilated American bodies dangling from a bridge in Falluja, Iraq would be on the front pages and television screens across the world.
“If you invade someone’s country,” Vonnegut said, “they’re going to fight back. Evidently that wasn’t taught at Yale,” the alma mater of George W. Bush.
In the connection, Vonnegut spoke of having recently seen Tim Robbins’ new play, “Embedded,” which deals with “the gang around the president” but never Dubya himself.
“When asked why not, Tim said: ‘He’s not in the loop.’ That really cleared up any questions I had,” observed Vonnegut, dryly, bringing down the house.
A question from the audience had to do with pilot Looseleaf Harper’s retrospective moment of doubt: What if he had decided, at the last minute, not to drop the bomb on Nagasaki? Vonnegut drew a distinction between Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9).
“I think Hiroshima may have had some military meaning,” he said. “I went to Japan with William Styron, who had been a marine in that war. He said: ‘I’d be dead now if there were no atom bomb.’
“But,” Vonnegut continued, “I think the Japanese were ready to surrender after Hiroshima. Nagasaki was to show the Soviets what we could do. It was a human act as vile as slavery.” Pause. “Of course Rumsfeld has a stomach for that sort of thing.”
Though he was grateful to see “Happy Birthday, Wanda June” staged again, Vonnegut now “would like to have changed a lot.” “What changes?” director Rachel Chavkin asked. “None of your business,” Vonnegut amiably replied.
An 18-year-old in the audience, NYU freshman Justin Levine, asked about the difference between novel writing and playwriting.
“In a book you can put the end of the world in three sentences,” said Vonnegut. “In the theater you can’t have it happen off-stage.”
Why had he written no more plays? “Well, for one thing, I began to have a lot of kids.”
Vonnegut seems to think of playwriting itself as a dead end—or at any rate, at a deader end than the collaboratively devised “Law and Order” and other such work he watches on television. “I think that’s the way to go now.”
And with that, he went. And we went. What remains, through April 18, is Wanda June, playing shuffleboard up in heaven with Albert Einstein, Mozart, Lewis Carroll, Jack the Ripper, Walt Disney, Major Siegfried Von Konigswald, and Jesus Christ.
Don’t tell Mel Gibson. He might crucify them all.
April 9, 2004: American Theater Web, Review
Reviewed by Laura Shea
In Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Happy Birthday, Wanda June, a warrior Odysseus named Harold Ryan (James M. Saidy) returns home to his reluctant Penelope (Shannon Riley), accompanied by his trusty companion, Colonel Looseleaf Harper (Jake Thomas). Penelope’s ardent suitors include a “peace-love-and-understanding” kind of guy, Dr. Norbert Woodly (Daniel Deferrari), and a vacuum salesman named Herb (Andrew Kahrl). Penelope’s confused son Paul (Charlie Wilson) keeps an eye on the proceedings as do a trio of heavenly watchers: the murdered murderer Siegfried Von Konigswald (Brian Hastert), the roller-skating Mildred (Liz Parker), and little Wanda June (Jill Frutkin), who was run down by an ice-cream truck on her tenth birthday, and whose cake, left behind at the bakery, bears the inscription that is the play’s title.
The characters spend almost as much time addressing the audience as they do addressing each other. Add a heavy dose of the absurd, and Happy Birthday, Wanda June demonstrates a world view circa 1970, when it first opened on Broadway. This Vietnam-era update of The Odyssey is in some ways dated—Vonnegut says in three acts what could certainly be said in two—but the U.S. invasion of Iraq adds a new relevance to the play, which questions a military undertaking that lacks widespread support on the home front.
The 7th Sign is a young company, many of whom are recent graduates of NYU’s Tisch School. Their youth in no way belies their professionalism. Rachel Chavkin’s skillful and original direction leads a strong cast through a series of gyrations, moving from drama to comedy with war games and a little shuffleboard thrown in. This requires an unflaggingly high level of energy, evident in all aspects of the production.
The living room set, designed by Jesse Hathaway Diaz, is decorated with the skulls of animals, their discarded bones still visible under the floorboards. Guests are announced by a doorbell that makes wild animal noises, a gift of Ernest Hemingway. In this production, sound comes at you from all directions. The extensive design by Allegra Libonati and Craig Stelzenmuller makes particularly effective use of the music of the seventies to set the scene or to comment on it. The songs of the Carpenters have never been more meaningful. Kudos to the sound board operators: Eric Rasmussen, Trip Langley, and Philip Rodriguez.
April 6, 2004: nytheatre.com, Review
Reviewed by Martin Denton
First of all, a gargantuan amount of gratitude is due The 7th Sign, simply for reviving Happy Birthday, Wanda June in New York in 2004. This play by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., written at the height of the Vietnam War Era, hasn't been done here (as far as I can tell) in more than twenty years. It's important to see it now, and not so much for its broad anti-war satirical content, though that's certainly pertinent. No, it's the passionate disputation against the status quo that needs to inspire us right now: Vonnegut's rage against the machine, so to speak, is pervasive in this electric play; and yet, there's also spectacular clarity where it matters:
LOOSELEAF: Wars would be a lot better, I think, if guys would say to themselves sometimes, "Jesus--I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much."
This line is spoken, I need to tell you, by a character called Colonel Looseleaf Harper, who in Vonnegut's world is the man who dropped the first atom bomb on Nagasaki.
The play takes place in the home of Harold Ryan, a military man who has served in lots and lots of wars of various shapes and sizes and made a major name for himself as hero in the process. His last engagement has been in a South American rainforest, in the company of his pilot (the already-mentioned Colonel Harper); when the play begins they've been missing for eight years and his wife has just about decided that they must be dead. Her name is Penelope (allusion to Homer intended), and she is being courted by Herb Shuttle, a snivelly vacuum cleaner salesman who is awed by Harold's accomplishments, and also by Dr. Norbert Woodly, a pacifist doctor who is appalled by them. She also has a 12-year-old son, Paul, who doesn't remember his father but thinks he would like him to come back home.
What happens when Harold returns unannounced, with Looseleaf Harper in tow, comprises the main action of the play. To give away its many surprises would be unfair; what I can tell you is that the inevitable confrontation between the man of war (Harold) and the man of peace (Norbert) does indeed take place, and that along the way to said confrontation, Vonnegut finds time to take pot shots at many of humanity's and America's scariest foibles and sacredest cows. And, oh yes: there is indeed someone named Wanda June who celebrates a birthday.
This production diverges from the published text in its ending and also, significantly, in its intermissions. Director Rachel Chavkin has made Wanda June into non-stop theatrics, which is an inspired choice, with two actors—Jill Frutkin and Brian Hastert—engaged in serious, funny hijinks between the acts that keep us amused and comment on the story intelligently. During the show proper, Chavkin's staging falters in a few places, but it's generally brisk and sharp. The design, featuring an inventive unit set by Jesse Hathaway Diaz and quirky but appropriate archetypal costumes by Kristen Sieh, is terrific.
The cast that Chavkin has assembled is excellent, with Frutkin, Hastert, Charlie Wilson (as Paul), and Liz Parker (as Mildred, one of Harold's former wives) particular standouts. Jake Thomas, currently a senior at NYU, is obviously far younger in real life than his middle-aged character Looseleaf Harper, but he's talented enough to make us forget the age difference much of the time. Anchoring the production is James M. Saidy as Harold, in a performance of commanding precision and detail. Saidy manages to be funny, scary, and sympathetic all at the same time; his work here is riveting—among the very finest acting on any stage in town at the moment.
In the end, the connection between the world conjured by Vonnegut and our own is less evident than we might expect; I was keenly aware that the passion that fueled the creation of Happy Birthday, Wanda June is still sadly absent from a lot of contemporary political drama. But The 7th Sign have certainly found the fire, and they're carrying their torch; hurrah for that. We'll keep our eye on them, and hope that visits to their fine and gallant revival of Wanda June sets a fuse under some other theatre-goers and theatre-makers.
Todd Hanson: Long enjoyed Satirist for The Onion, Review
This bold and experimental new staging of Kurt Vonnegut's Vietnam-Era satire "Happy Birthday, Wanda June" is by turns broadly comic, shocking, deeply affecting, and as relevant as ever in our current times of, as he himself would put it, "Generals blasting the bejeesus out of some third world country because of petroleum." An absurdist, angry, and heartbroken take on American Machismo, Odysseus' return to Penelope in "The Odyssey," the myth of Heaven, and our national shame of Nagasaki (among many other things) this stirring play reminds us that Kurt Vonnegut remains a national treasure and true genius of American letters -- A humorist as hilarious, outraged, and sad as Mark Twain; as generous, freethinking and deephearted as any human has a right to be; and a satirist about 75,000 times better than anybody at The Onion.
THE JUST ASSASSINS
Written by Albert Camus
Novermber 17, 2004: Theatre Reviews Limited, Review
Reviewed by Carolynn Albert
Political theater is a very dangerous territory. And yet, of all the recent productions born from the wake of the elections, the events of 9/11, and the war in Iraq, few of them have challenged the audience to take a chance and explore the ideas behind Terrorism as thoroughly as The 7th Sign production of “The Just Assassins.”
“The Just Assassins” takes the audience deep into the basement headquarters of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (one of the many activist factions fighting during the Russian Revolution). The terrorist party (as they hail themselves) is comprised of a small group of young men and one young woman. From the moment the lights come up tension is the key theme. Even when the characters laugh, the gravity of the situation betrays them. Within the first ten lines of the play it is made clear that they are on the verge of assassinating “The Grand Duke Serge.” The tension never drops and, thus, the audience never gets a moment to breathe--and neither do the actors on stage.
I’ve never been a fan of Camus, so I was surprised to see that a young theater company, like The 7th Sign, would take such a chance on such an unknown piece of writing. To my pleasure, Camus’ playwrighting skills carry much more passion and feral energy than his essays. But that being said, it was still clear that this was a play written by a philosopher (an existentialist philosopher, for that matter).
The meat of the plot deals with Yanek, the laughing idealist who dreams of being hanged, and the reasons behind his first failed attempt on The Grand Duke’s life. It is here that Camus shows us something most American audiences are not used to seeing: Terrorists with Honor. Yanek’s failure to kill is caused by one thing only: the innocent children in the path of the target. After Yanek fails and returns to the group, the debate begins.
Stepan, the embittered terrorist who believes in results over the means, verbally bashes Yanek and the rest of the group for allowing the lives of two children to hinder their mission. His argument is disturbing, only in that it is so difficult to ignore: If your purpose is to destroy a tyrant and thereby free your people, how can the lives of two children hold one back?
It is here where Dora (the female terrorist) first shows her true strength as she stands up to a frothing Stepan, and explains that a code of honor is necessary in order to maintain the support of the people. She declares that there is a Right way and a Wrong way of killing, something Stepan cannot agree with.
After a grueling battle of ideals, Yanek is determined to have another try at it. He is given a second chance, and does not fail. As anticipated, he is captured at the scene of the crime and dragged off to prison. It is here where the production takes its one major dramatic detour. It’s difficult to tell whether it was the writing of Camus, the directorial choices of Allegra Libonati, or the actors’ performances, but this scene in the jail cell is virtually the complete opposite of the rest of the play. Like some backwards nightmare world, characters from the first few acts morph into their corresponding antitheses: Boria (the quiet leader of the revolutionary group) plays the barking prison guard, Voinov (the timid and frightened youngster of the group) plays the old and murderous hangman, Stepan transforms into the joking vaudeville Chief of Police, and Dora now embodies the widowed Duchess. The result is a disturbing inverse of the first few acts, where--in the beginning--what was meant to be light-hearted was betrayed by its dark and dismal nature, in this scene--the prison cell nightmare--what should be dark and dismal is betrayed by the sheer absurdity and humor of the circumstances. The Chief of Police summarizes the purpose of this act with one statement, roughly: If an ideal hesitates at killing children, is it justified in killing a grown man? If murder is acceptable depending upon the circumstances, where does one draw the line?
All the actors, though young in age, give a palpable commitment to their roles. Mick Lauer, as Boria, says little in the play but is nonetheless dazzling in his constant awareness of every little moment. Charles Wilson, who plays Yanek, embodies the premature nature of the role well, however, in the darker more painful moments falls short of the severe gravity of the moment. Daniel Deferrari, who plays Voinov and the hangman, is admirable in his vulnerability and honesty. Jake Thomas, as Stepan, is a spitting rabid beast. His commitment is impossible to miss, but there are times when the words are lost through his gritted teeth. As the Chief of Police, Jake Thomas does an excellent job of jarring the audience with his swapping of characters, showcasing his obvious talents in comedic timing. Elliotte Crowell, who plays Dora and The Grand Duchess, is a time bomb--her journey is mesmerizing, one might even say that it is she who is the protagonist of this drama.
The play humanizes the Terrorists by allowing us to see them as ordinary people, but people threatened by tyrnanical forces. It raises potent questions about the justification of taking life and makes no attempts to provide any answers. In fact, by the end of the play, you are left only with the understanding of how difficult it is to determine when taking a life is truly justified. More than appropriate for our time, The 7th Sign have taken a bold leap into murky and uneasy territory. For that, they must be given a steady salute of credit.
Novermber 16, 2004: Talkin' Broadway, Review
Reviewed by Warren Hoffman
No, that creaky sound over at the UNDER St. Marks Theater isn't the floorboards, but the oddly dated writing of Albert Camus's philosophical drama The Just Assassins (Les Justes). As much as Kerry supporters might be tempted to check out the production to learn a thing or two about violent rebellion, revolution, and regime change, Camus's play stays fixedly in the realm of the theoretical as opposed to the emotional, resulting in a play that, despite its lofty goals and good intentions, never really reaches dramatic heights.
It's no wonder that Camus's play isn't revived more frequently. Despite the fact that Camus was one of the greatest existentialist thinkers and writers of the twentieth century, the dramaturgical stylistics of The Just Assassins tend to symbolism, rather than to the development of flesh and blood characters who we come to intimately know and identify with. Thus, even with the multiple analogous ties with recent suicide bombings and terrorist attacks in Iraq, Israel, Russia, and other places around the world, Camus's play feels distant and foreign.
Based on actual events, The Just Assassins follows the actions of a band of Russian revolutionaries who are plotting to bomb the carriage of Grand Duke Sergei. Led by Boria (Mick Lauer), the group of five plotters expound on their ideals of a new Russia while confronting their fears and anxieties about committing violent acts of murder. Is it honorable to commit violence in the name of a worthy cause? The first bombing attempt is suddenly postponed because Yanek (Charlie Wilson) sees that the Grand Duke's carriage is occupied by the Duke's niece and nephew, and he cannot bring himself to kill innocent children, begging the question, are some lives worth more than others? Rounding out the band of conspirators are Stepan (Jake Thomas), a tenacious fighter, Alexis (Daniel Deferrari), a timid activist, and Dora (Elliotte Crowell), the group's fierce female member. Following the first failed assassination attempt, the group tries again and Yanek is successful in his mission, killing the Grand Duke, but consequently getting himself arrested and ending up in jail.
Despite the "intrigue" that the play presents, the work is less about suspense and more about questions of morality. The result is a show that at times feels leaden and preachy. It doesn't help matters that the level of acting in this production, with one exception, tends to recall the earnest, but overwrought college productions I frequently saw as an undergraduate.
The five young fresh-faced actors, many of whom according to their bios are recent acting school graduates, are the right age for most of the characters in Camus's work (the Russian revolutionaries were often university students in their 20s), but they never really connect with this material. True, it's difficult to say how many Americans (actors or not) could really identify or understand the gravity and emotional intensity of the events experienced by the participants in the Russian Revolution, but the cast often seems dissociated from the raw frustration and fierce anger that needs to drive the piece. There's lots of hand-wringing, loud ranting, agitation, and gesticulation, but none of the actors are especially convincing.
Wilson as the conflicted bomb-thrower Yanek offers a performance that is particularly lacking in nuance, subtlety, and most importantly, gravitas. Though Yanek is given some of the play's most important speeches about justice and love, one never gets the sense that Wilson believes (or even understands) what he's saying. As directed by Allegra Libonati, the actors rattle off their lines with ferocious speed and try to sound convincing, but the rapidity does little to cover for the vacancy of interpretation.
Thank god, though, for Elliotte Crowell as Dora, the only member of the cast who is adequately distraught and unnerving enough to actually communicate the proper sense of despair and hopelessness experienced by these revolutionaries. Even when she is on the fringes of the action, listening to the conversations around her, Crowell's eyes and body language are marvelously dead, never once betraying a sense of levity or equanimity which the other actors often unintentionally and distractingly give off. Dora is desperate for love, attention, and warmth and reaches out to almost anyone who will give it to her, most notably Yanek. It's hard to buy Dora's love interest with Yanek, though, as her proclamations of love, as penned by Camus, are so theoretical and cerebral, couched in philosophical arguments, that they come off as devoid of emotion. Still, more than any of the other cast members, Crowell best embodies the serious urgency of Camus's work and is exciting to watch.
The play closes with Yanek's death as he is hanged for his assassination of the Grand Duke. Everyone in the cast is appropriately downcast and yet something (a sense of true consequence perhaps?) is still missing from the scene. Though The 7th Sign should be applauded for producing work that is rarely seen, perhaps next time they should pick a play whose themes are a little closer to home and to which they might be able to better relate.
ZASTROZZI: THE MASTER OF DISCIPLINE
Written by George F. Walker
October 8, 2004: Electronic Link Journey, Review
Reviewed by Kessa De Santis
ZASTROZZI: THE MASTER OF DISCIPLINE is a study of the battle between good and evil as told through the tale of two men, Verezzi the religious artist, and Zastrozzi the atheist. The latter is a notorious European criminal who has never been caught. The former, a delusional but seemingly harmless man who believes himself to be a saint, a messenger of God or the Messiah, is actually escaping from his murderous past into a peaceful world of his own imagination.
Throw into the mix a former priest, a bloodthirsty follower, an aristocratic virgin, and Europe’s greatest seductress, and the battle lines would appear to be delineated rather fiercely and assuredly from the moment the first signs of onstage lightning begin to illuminate the sparse set. ZASTROZZI takes place in the 19th Century, and has been aptly described as a "swashbuckling satire." It certainly has the look of it, from the costumes to the abundant sword fights.
From the dialogue, the good the bad, the ugly and the seductive of ZASTROZZI are clearly indicated. When considering the performances, however, if taken literally, most of the depictions are hollow, as if the actors, like the stereotypes or archetypes they represent, are only what we see on the surface. The brutality, the passion and even the violence do not ring true. Daniel Deferrari, as Zastrozzi, says the lines, fights the fights, adopts the stances and entertains the inner demons, but there is no sense of evil emanating from his portrayal of a man who kills without thought, steals, rapes, beats and denigrates all from friend to foe. Nemesis Verezzi, played with adolescent abandon by Charlie Wilson, certainly seems oblivious to reality, but never pious. Henchman Bernardo (Orion Taraban) and seductress Matilda (Emily Stern) seem to exist solely to please and serve Zastrozzi, and so there is an automaton quality to their actions. In contrast, Verezzi’s protector Victor (Matt Harrington) and local lady Julia (Elliotte Crowell) exhibit the capability to think for themselves, providing the only grounding points in the play.
Viewed through an alternate lens however, as social satire, one may find ZASTROZZI to be quite on the mark – a world in which people act in accord with what they profess to believe and whom they profess to be whether or not it comes from the heart, and where only the peripheral characters exhibit any sort of depth. Taken on this level, the play seems rather timely and poignant. An atheistic arch criminal who cannot be caught, even hiding in plain sight, who has set his sights on hunting down and destroying a good Christian? It is a little like the world at large reduced to a battle between two men.
Constructive criticism aside, I do think that audiences will find ZASTROZZI: THE MASTER OF DISCIPLINE interesting, especially when not taken too literally.
October 8, 2004: nytheatre.com, Review
Reviewed by Liz Kimberlin
The first incarnation of the charismatic arch-villain Zastrozzi came from Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1810 in the famed Romance poet’s first published novel. Canadian playwright George F. Walker apparently never read the novel, only a description in a biography of Shelley, so his contemporary play Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline can’t really be called an adaptation. It’s a verbose play—Zastrozzi’s existential soliloquies seem to go on forever—but otherwise a darkly fun, perversely smart piece of very theatrical theatre, and I can see where it could gain cult status, if it has not already. It also presents interesting technical challenges to mount, and this production from The 7th Sign now at the ArcLight Theater gives it a most commendable shot, although not always successful. Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline is a mean-spirited social satire about moral and spiritual accountability. It’s a cornucopia of the Grand Guignol, of operatic emotional extremes to the point of camp, gratuitous swordfights, and references to kinky, violent sex with rape as titillation (one woman even threatens to rape another woman). It’s trashy and exploitative, but intelligently philosophical and has very pretty language—a lot like most of what Shakespeare wrote, but more accessible to 21st century sensibilities. The story almost doesn’t matter; it’s about obsession. As Zastrozzi pontificates to the followers who look to him for their lives’ validation, “Life is a series of totally arbitrary and often meaningless events.”
Zastrozzi is a 19th-century world-class master criminal, murderer, robber, rapist, and zealous atheist whose greatest conceit is that he has never been caught. In the last few years, however, his new fixation has become revenge, of finding and killing a man named Verezzi who horribly murdered Zastrozzi’s mother. Verezzi seems always to mysteriously elude Zastrozzi and his two minions, the murderous but unimaginative Bernardo, and Matilda, Zastrozzi’s sultry, sociopathic mistress. Then we meet Verezzi, a man apparently so traumatized by his own crime of passion that his descent into madness has left him an overgrown baby with an adult libido and a delusion that he is a Messiah with a host of spiritual followers. He’s a complete idiot, albeit a beatifically happy one. His survival is due only to the resourcefulness of his harried servant, Victor, a symmetry obsessed ex-priest who once promised Verezzi’s father to protect him and now somehow manages to stay one step ahead of Zastrozzi. But Zastrozzi finally tracks clueless Verezzi to a small European mountain hamlet where they both fall madly in love with the beautiful and pure but pragmatic Julia. Then the fun really begins and the body count rises.
The 7th Sign’s production, directed by Adam Parrish, is technically very good-looking. The simple but elegant set, designed by Brian Cote, is comprised of steps that look like they are made of stone, and a giant window as the backdrop gives the feeling of being in an ancient fortress. The period costumes by Katja Andreiev are just, just beautiful.
The actors, most of them recent NYU Tisch School of the Arts grads and just a bit too young to truly make the most of this sophisticated play, are, nonetheless, also gorgeous and distinctive-looking, especially Danny Deferrari as a Rasputin-like Zastrozzi and Orion Taraban as the ghoul Bernardo. My favorite performances come from Matt Harrington as wise, tormented “ordinary man” Victor, and Elliotte Crowell as innocent but shrewd Julia. Both play characters written less over-the-top, perhaps, than the others, and manage to be more grounded and real against the obvious caricatures. Handsome, baby-faced Charlie Wilson quite looks the part of harmless, pathetically confused Verezzi, but he isn’t given much more to do here apart from bounce around like a puppy grown too large for his kennel. Emily Stern is certainly dangerously beautiful as evil maneater Matilda, and her voice is low and sexy. Yet, many of her lines tended to be delivered in a Lauren Bacall-esque monotone, and I sometimes struggled to hear her.
Unfortunately, what really keeps this production from transcending to the level it deserves to be at are the fights' staging and the sex scenes. The moments of erotic passion are, shall we say, less than committed in intensity. The swordfights themselves are nicely choreographed by KC Stage, but there are far too many of them, and they go on far too long. Ah, well, boys with long, sharp, pointy objects will, of course, be boys. A noticeable problem, though, comes in the staging when characters must drop and die, or when one character slugs or stabs another. When, for instance, Zastrozzi kills someone after a lengthy swordfight, his downstage victim (almost on top of the audience) is very visibly breathing with exertion after being pronounced stone cold dead. Similarly, when another character gets slapped or punched in the face, the strike is distractingly fake. Finally, there’s the issue of blood. All those bodies on the floor at the end—throats slit, digestive organs gouged out—and there’s no blood or, at least, a few entrails? This is no time to be dainty!
Still, on the whole, I was entertained by Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline, and I consider that The 7th Sign offered me a respectable first introduction to the intriguing work of George F. Walker. It will be interesting to see what other outré works this young, ambitious company chooses to tackle next.
October 14, 2004: OffOffOnline, Review
Reviewed by Marlon Hurt
If the Elizabethans had formulated nihilism, George F. Walker's Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline could very well have graced the stage 400 years prior to its original 1977 production. Set in late 19th-century Europe, the work is filled to the brim with revenge, rape (or attempted rape), swordplay, and the requisite pile of corpses. The only thing marking it as a thing of our time is the author's wicked awareness of the emptiness of all the machinations—an awareness he skewers with undisguised glee. Walker is an absurdist laughing at those who worry over absurdity; he wields satire the way a cannibal wields dining utensils.
Though 7th Sign Theater Company's revival, now playing at the ArcLight Theater, occasionally gives off the stiff scent of overthinking so common to today's classical and faux-classical theater—the clunky, overly geometrical set is the most glaring example—the production still manages to find the darkly amusing heart beating at Zastrozzi's center. 7th Sign may not be brave enough to dig into the meat of the thing and eat with bare hands, but they do manage to pull themselves up to Walker's bloody table with an admirable self-assuredness.
And there is plenty to feast on. Zastrozzi (Daniel Deferrari), an atheist and criminal mastermind, has gone into semiretirement—much to the relief of the European gentry, apparently—so that he, his murderous toady Bernardo (Orion Taraban), and the world-class femme fatale Matilda (Emily Stern) may track down and exact revenge on the purported killer of Zastrozzi's mother.
As strange as it may seem for a calculated killer and self-avowed judge of humanity to harbor tender feelings for dear Mom—did he feel robbed of the opportunity to do in the old broad himself?—the purported killer, Verezzi (Charlie Wilson), has an even stranger motivation. Specifically, none. Not only does Verezzi, an artist and religious fanatic of the feel-good variety, not remember committing the crime, he doesn't even believe that Zastrozzi exists, much to the chagrin of his servant, Victor (Matt Harrington), who has pledged to keep Verezzi out of the range of Zastrozzi's sword.
Of the risks 7th Sign does take, the most substantial—and the most rewarding—is a surrender to caricature. The device is underappreciated, as the skilled cast proves. Defferari as Zastrozzi, for instance, acts the perfect villain, right down to the pointy, black beard and inventive threats to inept subordinates. If the play weren't set before railroads became prominent, one of the female characters could very well have found herself tied to one. Though he is occasionally too deliberate for his own good, Defferari's work here is solidly grounded.
Wilson's Verezzi, on the other hand, lives in the air. (We first come across him as he is painting a German countryside. When Victor points out that Verezzi has never seen the German countryside, Verezzi concedes the point before countering airily that this is how he feels the German countryside should look.) Playing the role to the hilt—sometimes up to the very handle—Wilson often seems as if he's been air-dropped in from a Monty Python skit. The approach is frequently cloying, but what's the harm in giving us reason to hope that Zastrozzi finally finds and dispatches the delusional fop?
Walker's clever parallels continue with the two servants and the two, albeit very different, seductresses. As Bernardo, Taraban is less a hellhound than a hell-pup, a distinction he conveys using wonderfully wide eyes. Harrington plays the bespectacled Victor, by contrast, with an effective, world-weary slouch. Only Stern's overearnest turn as Matilda falls short, especially when held against Elliotte Crowell's hilariously understated work as Julia, a supposedly virginal bystander courted by Verezzi and nearly raped by both Bernardo and Zastrozzi.
In the end, the superficiality of 7th Sign's production is arguably its finest feature. Zastrozzi is superficial, in the same way a mirror is superficial: a two-dimensional surface can return a three-dimensional shock of recognition.
October 18, 2004: Show Business Weekly, Review
Reviewed by Michael Wang
Melodrama can either be done right, or done wrong. Like the spectacle of a terrible reality TV show, Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline toes the line between brilliant social satire and moronic tedium. It shines when its characters are blatantly absurd and self-conscious, but falls flat at the serious moments.
Set in the late-19th century French countryside, the play follows the brilliant, meditative and completely insane Zastrozzi (Daniel Deferrari), the master criminal of Europe. Bernardo (Orion Taraban) follows the rogue musketeer like a trained dog, murdering and pillaging alongside his mentor; the two have set aside their criminal ways in exchange for revenge. For three years, they have been hunting Verezzi (Charlie Wilson) who has killed Zastrozzi’s mother, but also happens to be a painter and an aspiring prophet. When they finally catch up with their prey, the seductress Matilda (Emily Stern), completely devoted to Zatrozzi, joins them in a scheme to destroy Verezzi. The ridiculous details make the rest of the story a provocative and successful satire rather than a dreary, grim exercise.
The title character is completely out of his time, speaking in dramatic overtones, while the rest of the ensemble cast is equally over-the-top, constantly mocking how serious they each can act. Verezzi and Julia (Elliotte Crowell), a dainty debutante, rise above in Zastrozzi as they play into their characters’ stupidity, allowing the audience to laugh at how clueless they are.
The characters’ silly banter and overripe personas made me laugh aloud several times during its two acts, but when the story became serious, the comedy loses steam. Verezzi’s tutor Victor (Matt Harrington) saves his master’s life many times and risks his own to face Zastrozzi. Yet, he is the least interesting character, despite Harrington’s impressive efforts. This is where Zastrozzi is held back. It may be just a step away from a brilliant comedy Oscar Wilde would be proud of, but there’s just too much sincerity.
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The 7th Sign...bold and thought-provoking, edgy yet accessible. This group knows what theater needs and how to deliver. They are professional, talented and highly engaging, but most of all, they are a blast to watch. I expect to be seeing more great things from them in the future.
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNEWritten by Kurt Vonnegut
April 5, 2004: Curtain Up, Review
Reviewed by Jenny Sandman
For my money, Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, second only to Einstein and Matt Groening. Slaughterhouse-5, Breakfast of Champions, and Welcome to the Monkey House are some of the most insolent, thought-provoking and deeply, strangely funny novels in the English language. His only play, Happy Birthday, Wanda June, opened on Broadway in 1970 and ran for 96 performances. It's prototypical Vonnegut, but is rarely done these days, all the more reason to see 7th Sign's production of it now playing at the Access Theatre.
Written as a protest against Vietnam, Happy Birthday, Wanda June centers around the conflict in the Ryan family. Harold Ryan, a warmongering career soldier and hunter, has been lost in the Amazon for eight years. When he suddenly returns home, long after being declared legally dead, he finds his wife Penelope dating a vacuum cleaner salesman and a peacenik doctor. His twelve-year-old son Paul is deeply confused. He wants so badly to worship his father, but he swiftly realizes (along with the rest of us) that Harold is a brute. At one point, when he asks for breakfast, and Penelope tells him the cook has quit, he replies, "You're a woman, aren't you? We already got a cook!" He destroys the doctor's 200-year-old violin in a fit of pique and treats his so-called best friend with outright contempt. In the midst of this household war, we realize those most hungry for war and destruction are those most afraid of what's going on inside.
Vonnegut, who often writes about war's worst atrocities (most notably the firebombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse-5), took a somewhat underhanded approach in this play. It's a clever look at the nature of war and the trained inhumanity of soldiers, but it's much funnier than it sounds.
The sharp satire that is the author's trademark is embodied in a number of scenes that take place in heaven. Little Wanda June, a ten-year-old girl, tells us about heaven ("We play shuffleboard all the time!") while frolicking with Harold's most famous victim, Von Konigswald, the Beast of Yugoslavia. The Beast and Wanda June play together in heaven, forming the Harold Ryan Fan Club, and offer running commentary on the state of the Ryan household and on Harold's eventual meltdown.
The cast is terrific--especially James M. Saidy as Harold and Jake Thomas as Looseleaf, his erstwhile best friend. Looseleaf's aw-shucks approach to life is no match for Harold's testosterone-driven personality, but Thomas is a strong enough actor in his own right to stand up to Saidy. Jill Frutkin as Wanda June and Brian Hastert as Von Konigswald steal the show--more than comic relief, these are characters in their own right.
The ingenious set highlights the central characters' feelings of isolation. The living room is built on an island of animal bones and bedecked with animal skulls, while the dispatches from heaven take place all around the "house." Director Rachel Chavkin makes full use of both the space and the feelings of isolation, as well as the underlying absurdity of the story. At one point, The Beast of Yugoslavia and Wanda June lead the cast in a lip-synched musical number.
7th Sign's production is subtle enough not to overpower Vonnegut's humor, but strong enough to do it justice. there may not be another chance to see Happy Birthday, Wanda June for a long time. Don't miss this chance to see this funny, well cast playwhile it lasts.
April 2, 2004: Theatermania, Vonnegut Talk-Back Article
Written by David Finkle
In a rare appearance, novelist Kurt Vonnegut took the stage of the Access Theatre for a talk-back session immediately after the April 1 performance of his only play, Happy Birthday, Wanda June.
His own harshest critic, the 81-year-old author commented that the Vietnam-era update of Homer's Odyssey was "overwritten in spots." (In both Homer's epic and Vonnegut's less-than-epic, a warrior returns home to face problems with his wife, her suitors, and his son.) He went on to say that, while he was "charmed" by the 7th Sign production, his play "does seem dated in some ways" and "I would like to have changed a lot." When asked by director Rachel Chavkin (who emceed with actor and 7th Sign co-founder Jake Thomas) what he would change, Vonnegut said with a laugh, "None of your business."
Addressing an audience populated primarily by young theatergoers who may not even have been born while American soldiers were still in Vietnam, Vonnegut spoke readily about what was clearly the real reason for the chat: an interest evinced by the 7th Sign organizers in how relevant Vonnegut considered his 1970 work to the current U.S. invasion of Iraq. The impression that the revered author gave was that he considered the "purposelessness" of both undertakings to be comparable. He seemed to reveal discontent with the current administration when he talked more or less in the abstract about the formation of an "oligarchy that might have to lie to keep the 'know-nothings' under control." He pointed out that, in the next election, voters get to choose between two members of the Yale secret society Skull and Bones. "I worry about Yale," he said as a smile crossed his famously craggy face.
Vonnegut, who sat on his chair as if impersonating a pretzel, talked on broader subjects as well. About contemporary script authorship, he said that he's become impressed with the concept of "team-writing" for television. Suggesting that this is the wave of the future, he praised the method for allowing writers to delve "deeper into subjects than used to be done in Broadway plays years ago."
Despite mentioning the rewrites he'd do on Happy Birthday, Wanda June, Vonnegut remarked that the 1970 production would "still be playing today" were it not for an Off-Broadway strike that closed theaters including the Edison, where his piece opened and ran for 96 performances. He characterized the audiences then as being "in full sympathy" with the play's tenets. On the other hand, Vonnegut also said of his foray into playwriting that he "didn't expect it to be produced" in the first place. Over the years, he said, he's had people speculate that the work's protagonist, Harold Ryan, is a version of Ernest Hemingway. While Vonnegut admitted that he saw a resemblance, he insisted that the blustery Hemingway was not a model for the character. Asked to discuss the villainous Ryan at greater length, he noted that he's said in the past that there are no villains in his work but now remarked: "Often, I'm full of shit." The confession was in keeping with his overall affability, which lasted through a series of questions from the audience. Finally, he did say that he was ready to go home.
Audience members responded to Vonnegut with the same enthusiasm that they'd shown his play. The revival will play through April 18.
April 7, 2004: Electronic Link Journey, Review
Reviewed by Kessa De Santis
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE is one of those deservedly noted plays that any theater buff, and certainly any theater professional, should experience. Written during the Vietnam War/Age of Aquarius, Vonnegut’s satirical look at the modern life and mores of the then and gone resonates and translates oh so well to the Gulf War/Age of Electronica here and now.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s play centers around the unexpected return, after eight years, of the warmonger and recently officially declared dead Harold Ryan. An out of step Odysseus come home to roost among the converts of the Love Generation, Ryan returns to find his wife, Penelope, being courted by two men, and his son, Paul, experiencing growing pains and mounting angst. Setting off the social debate that is at the very core of WANDA JUNE, the contrasts of peace versus violence as moral choices are drawn in broad strokes, as the characters are more representations of points of view than they are archetypes.
With some very minor exceptions, this production of HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE not only works, it works well. Where it could use a push is in the interpretation, or perhaps even the understanding of the ironic content, as some scenes were not played to their fullest potential. This was not the case at all whenever Wanda June (a boisterous Jill Frutkin) and Major Siegfried Von Konigswald (a bemused Brian Hastert) were onstage as virtual visitors from the shuffleboard and Ferris wheel filled afterlife. These two, full of giddy exuberance bounced all about the set, adding heaping doses of unbridled humor that carefully counterbalanced the satire being played by the angry Harold Ryan (James M. Saidy) and the torn Colonel Looseleaf Harper (Jake Thomas).
In terms of production values, The 7th Sign, led by the direction of Rachel Chavkin, has done an admirable job in bringing things together. The action never stops, even during intermission, as the actors remained on the set and in character engaging in various non-scripted acts of stage business. Add to the mix some good costumes, effective lighting and sound effects, and a set that makes the most of a very limited space, and anyone would have to admit that this revival of HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE is nothing if not ambitious.
That Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s script remains timely in spite of what could be some very dated material is reason enough to see a play like HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE. It has stood the test of time. As presented here, it is also something interesting and entertaining to watch.
April 8, 2004: The Onion, Complimentary Listing
This Kurt Vonnegut-penned satire about a war hero and a pacifist was originally produced on Broadway in 1970. The revival is considerably more stripped-down, but no less powerful.
April 8, 2004: Gay City News, Article on the Vonnegut Talk-back
Written by Jerry Tallmer
Harold Ryan, who has been off to war for seven years, killing everything in his gun sight just for the hell of it—103 kills by macho Harold’s own count—has come home at long last to his wife Penelope, who is not at all thrilled to see him, nor are the two suitors who have been hanging around, tongues hanging out: Dr. Norbert Woodly, a peace-loving thoughtful type, and Herb Shuttle, a vacuum-cleaner salesman.
Blustering Harold has brought with him—and is now trying to get rid of—a combat buddy, Colonel Looseleaf Harper, the pilot of the plane that dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki. Looseleaf’s mother-in-law dropped dead when she opened the door and he said, “Guess who?”
“That’s civilization for you,” moans traumatized Looseleaf. “Who knows what kills anybody?... First Nagasaki, now this.”
Which will give you an idea of the tenor of “Happy Birthday, Wanda June,” the only play—or in any event the only published play—by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the author whose powerful, apocalyptic novels (“Slaughterhouse 5,” “Cat’s Cradle,” “Breakfast of Champions”) have walloped the imaginations of several generations of readers.
“Wanda June” doesn’t often get produced. In 1970, it had a run at the De Lys and Edison theaters until knocked off the boards by a citywide actors’ strike. In 1971, it became a movie—“an awful movie,” Vonnegut said.
But now, and through April 18, it is being performed by a gallant company of quite good actors in the tiny Access Theater on the 4th floor of 380 Broadway, two blocks below Canal Street, and playwright Vonnegut was there to take in the show and afterward answer questions on opening night.
If the name Penelope rings a bell, that’s because it was also the name of the good and faithful wife of Odysseus, who preserved her chastity by sticking to her knitting for all seven years her husband was off helping to topple the towers of Troy, before combating monsters and maidens on the long voyage home.
The sharpest reaction from the audience during “Wanda June” was the gasp/snort at the returning warrior Harold’s line: “Educating a woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch. Everything stops.”
When Jake Thomas, aka Colonel Looseleaf Harper, led off the questioning by asking Vonnegut “how this play came about, where the idea came from,” the guest of the evening said, well, 40 years ago it had just seemed to him “preposterous…ridiculous,” that “Penelope should have no love life” all those years that Odysseus was away.
People used to ask him, Vonnegut said, whether the blowhard, kill-loving Harold Ryan was based on Ernest Hemingway. “My response is that though Hemingway was a bully and a braggart, he only shot one person.” Two beats. “Himself.” To be sure, Vonnegut added, “in ‘The Green Hills of Africa’ he boasts of having shot three lions in one day.”
The Harold Ryan of this production is the energetic James M. Saidy. Penelope is the intense, desirable Shannon Riley, Rachel Chavkin’s direction vaults over limited resources with considerable imagination, though also at utmost decibel count by all concerned.
Suitors Woodly and Shuttle are Daniel Deferrari and Andre Kahrl. Brian Hastert has fun with Major Siegfried Von Konigswald, “the Beast of Jugoslavia.” Charlie Wilson plays Ryan unfortunate young son, Liz Parker his even more unfortunate ex-wife. But the most vivid performance of all is by pent-up, fantastic, explosive Jill Frutkin as the 10-year-old Wanda June whose birthday it is as she wanders between afterlife and life in this hell on earth where one lone package dropped by Looseleaf Harper has wiped out 74,000 people (or maybe twice that) in a flash.
Vonnegut thanked the players for their “charming performance.” He mentioned the stars of the 1970 production—Kevin McCarthy, William Hickey, Marsha Mason (“then unknown”).
In 1970, of course, as well as the few years earlier when Vonnegut must have been writing “Happy Birthday, Wanda June,” the United States was deep in the coils of Vietnam.
“Vietnam was a terrible mistake,” said Vonnegut, noting that one member of the audience—his wife, photographer/writer Jill Krementz—had done a book about it (“The Face of South Vietnam,” by her and Dean Brelis, 1968). “In the end, we got kicked out.” Short pause. “Nevermind where we are now.”
He mentioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “talk of how ‘Americans don’t have the stomach for casualties’”—citing that remark, though neither Vonnegut nor anyone else in the room could have known that only some later the photos of two burned and mutilated American bodies dangling from a bridge in Falluja, Iraq would be on the front pages and television screens across the world.
“If you invade someone’s country,” Vonnegut said, “they’re going to fight back. Evidently that wasn’t taught at Yale,” the alma mater of George W. Bush.
In the connection, Vonnegut spoke of having recently seen Tim Robbins’ new play, “Embedded,” which deals with “the gang around the president” but never Dubya himself.
“When asked why not, Tim said: ‘He’s not in the loop.’ That really cleared up any questions I had,” observed Vonnegut, dryly, bringing down the house.
A question from the audience had to do with pilot Looseleaf Harper’s retrospective moment of doubt: What if he had decided, at the last minute, not to drop the bomb on Nagasaki? Vonnegut drew a distinction between Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9).
“I think Hiroshima may have had some military meaning,” he said. “I went to Japan with William Styron, who had been a marine in that war. He said: ‘I’d be dead now if there were no atom bomb.’
“But,” Vonnegut continued, “I think the Japanese were ready to surrender after Hiroshima. Nagasaki was to show the Soviets what we could do. It was a human act as vile as slavery.” Pause. “Of course Rumsfeld has a stomach for that sort of thing.”
Though he was grateful to see “Happy Birthday, Wanda June” staged again, Vonnegut now “would like to have changed a lot.” “What changes?” director Rachel Chavkin asked. “None of your business,” Vonnegut amiably replied.
An 18-year-old in the audience, NYU freshman Justin Levine, asked about the difference between novel writing and playwriting.
“In a book you can put the end of the world in three sentences,” said Vonnegut. “In the theater you can’t have it happen off-stage.”
Why had he written no more plays? “Well, for one thing, I began to have a lot of kids.”
Vonnegut seems to think of playwriting itself as a dead end—or at any rate, at a deader end than the collaboratively devised “Law and Order” and other such work he watches on television. “I think that’s the way to go now.”
And with that, he went. And we went. What remains, through April 18, is Wanda June, playing shuffleboard up in heaven with Albert Einstein, Mozart, Lewis Carroll, Jack the Ripper, Walt Disney, Major Siegfried Von Konigswald, and Jesus Christ.
Don’t tell Mel Gibson. He might crucify them all.
April 9, 2004: American Theater Web, Review
Reviewed by Laura Shea
In Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Happy Birthday, Wanda June, a warrior Odysseus named Harold Ryan (James M. Saidy) returns home to his reluctant Penelope (Shannon Riley), accompanied by his trusty companion, Colonel Looseleaf Harper (Jake Thomas). Penelope’s ardent suitors include a “peace-love-and-understanding” kind of guy, Dr. Norbert Woodly (Daniel Deferrari), and a vacuum salesman named Herb (Andrew Kahrl). Penelope’s confused son Paul (Charlie Wilson) keeps an eye on the proceedings as do a trio of heavenly watchers: the murdered murderer Siegfried Von Konigswald (Brian Hastert), the roller-skating Mildred (Liz Parker), and little Wanda June (Jill Frutkin), who was run down by an ice-cream truck on her tenth birthday, and whose cake, left behind at the bakery, bears the inscription that is the play’s title.
The characters spend almost as much time addressing the audience as they do addressing each other. Add a heavy dose of the absurd, and Happy Birthday, Wanda June demonstrates a world view circa 1970, when it first opened on Broadway. This Vietnam-era update of The Odyssey is in some ways dated—Vonnegut says in three acts what could certainly be said in two—but the U.S. invasion of Iraq adds a new relevance to the play, which questions a military undertaking that lacks widespread support on the home front.
The 7th Sign is a young company, many of whom are recent graduates of NYU’s Tisch School. Their youth in no way belies their professionalism. Rachel Chavkin’s skillful and original direction leads a strong cast through a series of gyrations, moving from drama to comedy with war games and a little shuffleboard thrown in. This requires an unflaggingly high level of energy, evident in all aspects of the production.
The living room set, designed by Jesse Hathaway Diaz, is decorated with the skulls of animals, their discarded bones still visible under the floorboards. Guests are announced by a doorbell that makes wild animal noises, a gift of Ernest Hemingway. In this production, sound comes at you from all directions. The extensive design by Allegra Libonati and Craig Stelzenmuller makes particularly effective use of the music of the seventies to set the scene or to comment on it. The songs of the Carpenters have never been more meaningful. Kudos to the sound board operators: Eric Rasmussen, Trip Langley, and Philip Rodriguez.
April 6, 2004: nytheatre.com, Review
Reviewed by Martin Denton
First of all, a gargantuan amount of gratitude is due The 7th Sign, simply for reviving Happy Birthday, Wanda June in New York in 2004. This play by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., written at the height of the Vietnam War Era, hasn't been done here (as far as I can tell) in more than twenty years. It's important to see it now, and not so much for its broad anti-war satirical content, though that's certainly pertinent. No, it's the passionate disputation against the status quo that needs to inspire us right now: Vonnegut's rage against the machine, so to speak, is pervasive in this electric play; and yet, there's also spectacular clarity where it matters:
LOOSELEAF: Wars would be a lot better, I think, if guys would say to themselves sometimes, "Jesus--I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much."
This line is spoken, I need to tell you, by a character called Colonel Looseleaf Harper, who in Vonnegut's world is the man who dropped the first atom bomb on Nagasaki.
The play takes place in the home of Harold Ryan, a military man who has served in lots and lots of wars of various shapes and sizes and made a major name for himself as hero in the process. His last engagement has been in a South American rainforest, in the company of his pilot (the already-mentioned Colonel Harper); when the play begins they've been missing for eight years and his wife has just about decided that they must be dead. Her name is Penelope (allusion to Homer intended), and she is being courted by Herb Shuttle, a snivelly vacuum cleaner salesman who is awed by Harold's accomplishments, and also by Dr. Norbert Woodly, a pacifist doctor who is appalled by them. She also has a 12-year-old son, Paul, who doesn't remember his father but thinks he would like him to come back home.
What happens when Harold returns unannounced, with Looseleaf Harper in tow, comprises the main action of the play. To give away its many surprises would be unfair; what I can tell you is that the inevitable confrontation between the man of war (Harold) and the man of peace (Norbert) does indeed take place, and that along the way to said confrontation, Vonnegut finds time to take pot shots at many of humanity's and America's scariest foibles and sacredest cows. And, oh yes: there is indeed someone named Wanda June who celebrates a birthday.
This production diverges from the published text in its ending and also, significantly, in its intermissions. Director Rachel Chavkin has made Wanda June into non-stop theatrics, which is an inspired choice, with two actors—Jill Frutkin and Brian Hastert—engaged in serious, funny hijinks between the acts that keep us amused and comment on the story intelligently. During the show proper, Chavkin's staging falters in a few places, but it's generally brisk and sharp. The design, featuring an inventive unit set by Jesse Hathaway Diaz and quirky but appropriate archetypal costumes by Kristen Sieh, is terrific.
The cast that Chavkin has assembled is excellent, with Frutkin, Hastert, Charlie Wilson (as Paul), and Liz Parker (as Mildred, one of Harold's former wives) particular standouts. Jake Thomas, currently a senior at NYU, is obviously far younger in real life than his middle-aged character Looseleaf Harper, but he's talented enough to make us forget the age difference much of the time. Anchoring the production is James M. Saidy as Harold, in a performance of commanding precision and detail. Saidy manages to be funny, scary, and sympathetic all at the same time; his work here is riveting—among the very finest acting on any stage in town at the moment.
In the end, the connection between the world conjured by Vonnegut and our own is less evident than we might expect; I was keenly aware that the passion that fueled the creation of Happy Birthday, Wanda June is still sadly absent from a lot of contemporary political drama. But The 7th Sign have certainly found the fire, and they're carrying their torch; hurrah for that. We'll keep our eye on them, and hope that visits to their fine and gallant revival of Wanda June sets a fuse under some other theatre-goers and theatre-makers.
Todd Hanson: Long enjoyed Satirist for The Onion, Review
This bold and experimental new staging of Kurt Vonnegut's Vietnam-Era satire "Happy Birthday, Wanda June" is by turns broadly comic, shocking, deeply affecting, and as relevant as ever in our current times of, as he himself would put it, "Generals blasting the bejeesus out of some third world country because of petroleum." An absurdist, angry, and heartbroken take on American Machismo, Odysseus' return to Penelope in "The Odyssey," the myth of Heaven, and our national shame of Nagasaki (among many other things) this stirring play reminds us that Kurt Vonnegut remains a national treasure and true genius of American letters -- A humorist as hilarious, outraged, and sad as Mark Twain; as generous, freethinking and deephearted as any human has a right to be; and a satirist about 75,000 times better than anybody at The Onion.
THE JUST ASSASSINSWritten by Albert Camus
Novermber 17, 2004: Theatre Reviews Limited, Review
Reviewed by Carolynn Albert
Political theater is a very dangerous territory. And yet, of all the recent productions born from the wake of the elections, the events of 9/11, and the war in Iraq, few of them have challenged the audience to take a chance and explore the ideas behind Terrorism as thoroughly as The 7th Sign production of “The Just Assassins.”
“The Just Assassins” takes the audience deep into the basement headquarters of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (one of the many activist factions fighting during the Russian Revolution). The terrorist party (as they hail themselves) is comprised of a small group of young men and one young woman. From the moment the lights come up tension is the key theme. Even when the characters laugh, the gravity of the situation betrays them. Within the first ten lines of the play it is made clear that they are on the verge of assassinating “The Grand Duke Serge.” The tension never drops and, thus, the audience never gets a moment to breathe--and neither do the actors on stage.
I’ve never been a fan of Camus, so I was surprised to see that a young theater company, like The 7th Sign, would take such a chance on such an unknown piece of writing. To my pleasure, Camus’ playwrighting skills carry much more passion and feral energy than his essays. But that being said, it was still clear that this was a play written by a philosopher (an existentialist philosopher, for that matter).
The meat of the plot deals with Yanek, the laughing idealist who dreams of being hanged, and the reasons behind his first failed attempt on The Grand Duke’s life. It is here that Camus shows us something most American audiences are not used to seeing: Terrorists with Honor. Yanek’s failure to kill is caused by one thing only: the innocent children in the path of the target. After Yanek fails and returns to the group, the debate begins.
Stepan, the embittered terrorist who believes in results over the means, verbally bashes Yanek and the rest of the group for allowing the lives of two children to hinder their mission. His argument is disturbing, only in that it is so difficult to ignore: If your purpose is to destroy a tyrant and thereby free your people, how can the lives of two children hold one back?
It is here where Dora (the female terrorist) first shows her true strength as she stands up to a frothing Stepan, and explains that a code of honor is necessary in order to maintain the support of the people. She declares that there is a Right way and a Wrong way of killing, something Stepan cannot agree with.
After a grueling battle of ideals, Yanek is determined to have another try at it. He is given a second chance, and does not fail. As anticipated, he is captured at the scene of the crime and dragged off to prison. It is here where the production takes its one major dramatic detour. It’s difficult to tell whether it was the writing of Camus, the directorial choices of Allegra Libonati, or the actors’ performances, but this scene in the jail cell is virtually the complete opposite of the rest of the play. Like some backwards nightmare world, characters from the first few acts morph into their corresponding antitheses: Boria (the quiet leader of the revolutionary group) plays the barking prison guard, Voinov (the timid and frightened youngster of the group) plays the old and murderous hangman, Stepan transforms into the joking vaudeville Chief of Police, and Dora now embodies the widowed Duchess. The result is a disturbing inverse of the first few acts, where--in the beginning--what was meant to be light-hearted was betrayed by its dark and dismal nature, in this scene--the prison cell nightmare--what should be dark and dismal is betrayed by the sheer absurdity and humor of the circumstances. The Chief of Police summarizes the purpose of this act with one statement, roughly: If an ideal hesitates at killing children, is it justified in killing a grown man? If murder is acceptable depending upon the circumstances, where does one draw the line?
All the actors, though young in age, give a palpable commitment to their roles. Mick Lauer, as Boria, says little in the play but is nonetheless dazzling in his constant awareness of every little moment. Charles Wilson, who plays Yanek, embodies the premature nature of the role well, however, in the darker more painful moments falls short of the severe gravity of the moment. Daniel Deferrari, who plays Voinov and the hangman, is admirable in his vulnerability and honesty. Jake Thomas, as Stepan, is a spitting rabid beast. His commitment is impossible to miss, but there are times when the words are lost through his gritted teeth. As the Chief of Police, Jake Thomas does an excellent job of jarring the audience with his swapping of characters, showcasing his obvious talents in comedic timing. Elliotte Crowell, who plays Dora and The Grand Duchess, is a time bomb--her journey is mesmerizing, one might even say that it is she who is the protagonist of this drama.
The play humanizes the Terrorists by allowing us to see them as ordinary people, but people threatened by tyrnanical forces. It raises potent questions about the justification of taking life and makes no attempts to provide any answers. In fact, by the end of the play, you are left only with the understanding of how difficult it is to determine when taking a life is truly justified. More than appropriate for our time, The 7th Sign have taken a bold leap into murky and uneasy territory. For that, they must be given a steady salute of credit.
Novermber 16, 2004: Talkin' Broadway, Review
Reviewed by Warren Hoffman
No, that creaky sound over at the UNDER St. Marks Theater isn't the floorboards, but the oddly dated writing of Albert Camus's philosophical drama The Just Assassins (Les Justes). As much as Kerry supporters might be tempted to check out the production to learn a thing or two about violent rebellion, revolution, and regime change, Camus's play stays fixedly in the realm of the theoretical as opposed to the emotional, resulting in a play that, despite its lofty goals and good intentions, never really reaches dramatic heights.
It's no wonder that Camus's play isn't revived more frequently. Despite the fact that Camus was one of the greatest existentialist thinkers and writers of the twentieth century, the dramaturgical stylistics of The Just Assassins tend to symbolism, rather than to the development of flesh and blood characters who we come to intimately know and identify with. Thus, even with the multiple analogous ties with recent suicide bombings and terrorist attacks in Iraq, Israel, Russia, and other places around the world, Camus's play feels distant and foreign.
Based on actual events, The Just Assassins follows the actions of a band of Russian revolutionaries who are plotting to bomb the carriage of Grand Duke Sergei. Led by Boria (Mick Lauer), the group of five plotters expound on their ideals of a new Russia while confronting their fears and anxieties about committing violent acts of murder. Is it honorable to commit violence in the name of a worthy cause? The first bombing attempt is suddenly postponed because Yanek (Charlie Wilson) sees that the Grand Duke's carriage is occupied by the Duke's niece and nephew, and he cannot bring himself to kill innocent children, begging the question, are some lives worth more than others? Rounding out the band of conspirators are Stepan (Jake Thomas), a tenacious fighter, Alexis (Daniel Deferrari), a timid activist, and Dora (Elliotte Crowell), the group's fierce female member. Following the first failed assassination attempt, the group tries again and Yanek is successful in his mission, killing the Grand Duke, but consequently getting himself arrested and ending up in jail.
Despite the "intrigue" that the play presents, the work is less about suspense and more about questions of morality. The result is a show that at times feels leaden and preachy. It doesn't help matters that the level of acting in this production, with one exception, tends to recall the earnest, but overwrought college productions I frequently saw as an undergraduate.
The five young fresh-faced actors, many of whom according to their bios are recent acting school graduates, are the right age for most of the characters in Camus's work (the Russian revolutionaries were often university students in their 20s), but they never really connect with this material. True, it's difficult to say how many Americans (actors or not) could really identify or understand the gravity and emotional intensity of the events experienced by the participants in the Russian Revolution, but the cast often seems dissociated from the raw frustration and fierce anger that needs to drive the piece. There's lots of hand-wringing, loud ranting, agitation, and gesticulation, but none of the actors are especially convincing.
Wilson as the conflicted bomb-thrower Yanek offers a performance that is particularly lacking in nuance, subtlety, and most importantly, gravitas. Though Yanek is given some of the play's most important speeches about justice and love, one never gets the sense that Wilson believes (or even understands) what he's saying. As directed by Allegra Libonati, the actors rattle off their lines with ferocious speed and try to sound convincing, but the rapidity does little to cover for the vacancy of interpretation.
Thank god, though, for Elliotte Crowell as Dora, the only member of the cast who is adequately distraught and unnerving enough to actually communicate the proper sense of despair and hopelessness experienced by these revolutionaries. Even when she is on the fringes of the action, listening to the conversations around her, Crowell's eyes and body language are marvelously dead, never once betraying a sense of levity or equanimity which the other actors often unintentionally and distractingly give off. Dora is desperate for love, attention, and warmth and reaches out to almost anyone who will give it to her, most notably Yanek. It's hard to buy Dora's love interest with Yanek, though, as her proclamations of love, as penned by Camus, are so theoretical and cerebral, couched in philosophical arguments, that they come off as devoid of emotion. Still, more than any of the other cast members, Crowell best embodies the serious urgency of Camus's work and is exciting to watch.
The play closes with Yanek's death as he is hanged for his assassination of the Grand Duke. Everyone in the cast is appropriately downcast and yet something (a sense of true consequence perhaps?) is still missing from the scene. Though The 7th Sign should be applauded for producing work that is rarely seen, perhaps next time they should pick a play whose themes are a little closer to home and to which they might be able to better relate.
ZASTROZZI: THE MASTER OF DISCIPLINEWritten by George F. Walker
October 8, 2004: Electronic Link Journey, Review
Reviewed by Kessa De Santis
ZASTROZZI: THE MASTER OF DISCIPLINE is a study of the battle between good and evil as told through the tale of two men, Verezzi the religious artist, and Zastrozzi the atheist. The latter is a notorious European criminal who has never been caught. The former, a delusional but seemingly harmless man who believes himself to be a saint, a messenger of God or the Messiah, is actually escaping from his murderous past into a peaceful world of his own imagination.
Throw into the mix a former priest, a bloodthirsty follower, an aristocratic virgin, and Europe’s greatest seductress, and the battle lines would appear to be delineated rather fiercely and assuredly from the moment the first signs of onstage lightning begin to illuminate the sparse set. ZASTROZZI takes place in the 19th Century, and has been aptly described as a "swashbuckling satire." It certainly has the look of it, from the costumes to the abundant sword fights.
From the dialogue, the good the bad, the ugly and the seductive of ZASTROZZI are clearly indicated. When considering the performances, however, if taken literally, most of the depictions are hollow, as if the actors, like the stereotypes or archetypes they represent, are only what we see on the surface. The brutality, the passion and even the violence do not ring true. Daniel Deferrari, as Zastrozzi, says the lines, fights the fights, adopts the stances and entertains the inner demons, but there is no sense of evil emanating from his portrayal of a man who kills without thought, steals, rapes, beats and denigrates all from friend to foe. Nemesis Verezzi, played with adolescent abandon by Charlie Wilson, certainly seems oblivious to reality, but never pious. Henchman Bernardo (Orion Taraban) and seductress Matilda (Emily Stern) seem to exist solely to please and serve Zastrozzi, and so there is an automaton quality to their actions. In contrast, Verezzi’s protector Victor (Matt Harrington) and local lady Julia (Elliotte Crowell) exhibit the capability to think for themselves, providing the only grounding points in the play.
Viewed through an alternate lens however, as social satire, one may find ZASTROZZI to be quite on the mark – a world in which people act in accord with what they profess to believe and whom they profess to be whether or not it comes from the heart, and where only the peripheral characters exhibit any sort of depth. Taken on this level, the play seems rather timely and poignant. An atheistic arch criminal who cannot be caught, even hiding in plain sight, who has set his sights on hunting down and destroying a good Christian? It is a little like the world at large reduced to a battle between two men.
Constructive criticism aside, I do think that audiences will find ZASTROZZI: THE MASTER OF DISCIPLINE interesting, especially when not taken too literally.
October 8, 2004: nytheatre.com, Review
Reviewed by Liz Kimberlin
The first incarnation of the charismatic arch-villain Zastrozzi came from Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1810 in the famed Romance poet’s first published novel. Canadian playwright George F. Walker apparently never read the novel, only a description in a biography of Shelley, so his contemporary play Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline can’t really be called an adaptation. It’s a verbose play—Zastrozzi’s existential soliloquies seem to go on forever—but otherwise a darkly fun, perversely smart piece of very theatrical theatre, and I can see where it could gain cult status, if it has not already. It also presents interesting technical challenges to mount, and this production from The 7th Sign now at the ArcLight Theater gives it a most commendable shot, although not always successful. Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline is a mean-spirited social satire about moral and spiritual accountability. It’s a cornucopia of the Grand Guignol, of operatic emotional extremes to the point of camp, gratuitous swordfights, and references to kinky, violent sex with rape as titillation (one woman even threatens to rape another woman). It’s trashy and exploitative, but intelligently philosophical and has very pretty language—a lot like most of what Shakespeare wrote, but more accessible to 21st century sensibilities. The story almost doesn’t matter; it’s about obsession. As Zastrozzi pontificates to the followers who look to him for their lives’ validation, “Life is a series of totally arbitrary and often meaningless events.”
Zastrozzi is a 19th-century world-class master criminal, murderer, robber, rapist, and zealous atheist whose greatest conceit is that he has never been caught. In the last few years, however, his new fixation has become revenge, of finding and killing a man named Verezzi who horribly murdered Zastrozzi’s mother. Verezzi seems always to mysteriously elude Zastrozzi and his two minions, the murderous but unimaginative Bernardo, and Matilda, Zastrozzi’s sultry, sociopathic mistress. Then we meet Verezzi, a man apparently so traumatized by his own crime of passion that his descent into madness has left him an overgrown baby with an adult libido and a delusion that he is a Messiah with a host of spiritual followers. He’s a complete idiot, albeit a beatifically happy one. His survival is due only to the resourcefulness of his harried servant, Victor, a symmetry obsessed ex-priest who once promised Verezzi’s father to protect him and now somehow manages to stay one step ahead of Zastrozzi. But Zastrozzi finally tracks clueless Verezzi to a small European mountain hamlet where they both fall madly in love with the beautiful and pure but pragmatic Julia. Then the fun really begins and the body count rises.
The 7th Sign’s production, directed by Adam Parrish, is technically very good-looking. The simple but elegant set, designed by Brian Cote, is comprised of steps that look like they are made of stone, and a giant window as the backdrop gives the feeling of being in an ancient fortress. The period costumes by Katja Andreiev are just, just beautiful.
The actors, most of them recent NYU Tisch School of the Arts grads and just a bit too young to truly make the most of this sophisticated play, are, nonetheless, also gorgeous and distinctive-looking, especially Danny Deferrari as a Rasputin-like Zastrozzi and Orion Taraban as the ghoul Bernardo. My favorite performances come from Matt Harrington as wise, tormented “ordinary man” Victor, and Elliotte Crowell as innocent but shrewd Julia. Both play characters written less over-the-top, perhaps, than the others, and manage to be more grounded and real against the obvious caricatures. Handsome, baby-faced Charlie Wilson quite looks the part of harmless, pathetically confused Verezzi, but he isn’t given much more to do here apart from bounce around like a puppy grown too large for his kennel. Emily Stern is certainly dangerously beautiful as evil maneater Matilda, and her voice is low and sexy. Yet, many of her lines tended to be delivered in a Lauren Bacall-esque monotone, and I sometimes struggled to hear her.
Unfortunately, what really keeps this production from transcending to the level it deserves to be at are the fights' staging and the sex scenes. The moments of erotic passion are, shall we say, less than committed in intensity. The swordfights themselves are nicely choreographed by KC Stage, but there are far too many of them, and they go on far too long. Ah, well, boys with long, sharp, pointy objects will, of course, be boys. A noticeable problem, though, comes in the staging when characters must drop and die, or when one character slugs or stabs another. When, for instance, Zastrozzi kills someone after a lengthy swordfight, his downstage victim (almost on top of the audience) is very visibly breathing with exertion after being pronounced stone cold dead. Similarly, when another character gets slapped or punched in the face, the strike is distractingly fake. Finally, there’s the issue of blood. All those bodies on the floor at the end—throats slit, digestive organs gouged out—and there’s no blood or, at least, a few entrails? This is no time to be dainty!
Still, on the whole, I was entertained by Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline, and I consider that The 7th Sign offered me a respectable first introduction to the intriguing work of George F. Walker. It will be interesting to see what other outré works this young, ambitious company chooses to tackle next.
October 14, 2004: OffOffOnline, Review
Reviewed by Marlon Hurt
If the Elizabethans had formulated nihilism, George F. Walker's Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline could very well have graced the stage 400 years prior to its original 1977 production. Set in late 19th-century Europe, the work is filled to the brim with revenge, rape (or attempted rape), swordplay, and the requisite pile of corpses. The only thing marking it as a thing of our time is the author's wicked awareness of the emptiness of all the machinations—an awareness he skewers with undisguised glee. Walker is an absurdist laughing at those who worry over absurdity; he wields satire the way a cannibal wields dining utensils.
Though 7th Sign Theater Company's revival, now playing at the ArcLight Theater, occasionally gives off the stiff scent of overthinking so common to today's classical and faux-classical theater—the clunky, overly geometrical set is the most glaring example—the production still manages to find the darkly amusing heart beating at Zastrozzi's center. 7th Sign may not be brave enough to dig into the meat of the thing and eat with bare hands, but they do manage to pull themselves up to Walker's bloody table with an admirable self-assuredness.
And there is plenty to feast on. Zastrozzi (Daniel Deferrari), an atheist and criminal mastermind, has gone into semiretirement—much to the relief of the European gentry, apparently—so that he, his murderous toady Bernardo (Orion Taraban), and the world-class femme fatale Matilda (Emily Stern) may track down and exact revenge on the purported killer of Zastrozzi's mother.
As strange as it may seem for a calculated killer and self-avowed judge of humanity to harbor tender feelings for dear Mom—did he feel robbed of the opportunity to do in the old broad himself?—the purported killer, Verezzi (Charlie Wilson), has an even stranger motivation. Specifically, none. Not only does Verezzi, an artist and religious fanatic of the feel-good variety, not remember committing the crime, he doesn't even believe that Zastrozzi exists, much to the chagrin of his servant, Victor (Matt Harrington), who has pledged to keep Verezzi out of the range of Zastrozzi's sword.
Of the risks 7th Sign does take, the most substantial—and the most rewarding—is a surrender to caricature. The device is underappreciated, as the skilled cast proves. Defferari as Zastrozzi, for instance, acts the perfect villain, right down to the pointy, black beard and inventive threats to inept subordinates. If the play weren't set before railroads became prominent, one of the female characters could very well have found herself tied to one. Though he is occasionally too deliberate for his own good, Defferari's work here is solidly grounded.
Wilson's Verezzi, on the other hand, lives in the air. (We first come across him as he is painting a German countryside. When Victor points out that Verezzi has never seen the German countryside, Verezzi concedes the point before countering airily that this is how he feels the German countryside should look.) Playing the role to the hilt—sometimes up to the very handle—Wilson often seems as if he's been air-dropped in from a Monty Python skit. The approach is frequently cloying, but what's the harm in giving us reason to hope that Zastrozzi finally finds and dispatches the delusional fop?
Walker's clever parallels continue with the two servants and the two, albeit very different, seductresses. As Bernardo, Taraban is less a hellhound than a hell-pup, a distinction he conveys using wonderfully wide eyes. Harrington plays the bespectacled Victor, by contrast, with an effective, world-weary slouch. Only Stern's overearnest turn as Matilda falls short, especially when held against Elliotte Crowell's hilariously understated work as Julia, a supposedly virginal bystander courted by Verezzi and nearly raped by both Bernardo and Zastrozzi.
In the end, the superficiality of 7th Sign's production is arguably its finest feature. Zastrozzi is superficial, in the same way a mirror is superficial: a two-dimensional surface can return a three-dimensional shock of recognition.
October 18, 2004: Show Business Weekly, Review
Reviewed by Michael Wang
Melodrama can either be done right, or done wrong. Like the spectacle of a terrible reality TV show, Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline toes the line between brilliant social satire and moronic tedium. It shines when its characters are blatantly absurd and self-conscious, but falls flat at the serious moments.
Set in the late-19th century French countryside, the play follows the brilliant, meditative and completely insane Zastrozzi (Daniel Deferrari), the master criminal of Europe. Bernardo (Orion Taraban) follows the rogue musketeer like a trained dog, murdering and pillaging alongside his mentor; the two have set aside their criminal ways in exchange for revenge. For three years, they have been hunting Verezzi (Charlie Wilson) who has killed Zastrozzi’s mother, but also happens to be a painter and an aspiring prophet. When they finally catch up with their prey, the seductress Matilda (Emily Stern), completely devoted to Zatrozzi, joins them in a scheme to destroy Verezzi. The ridiculous details make the rest of the story a provocative and successful satire rather than a dreary, grim exercise.
The title character is completely out of his time, speaking in dramatic overtones, while the rest of the ensemble cast is equally over-the-top, constantly mocking how serious they each can act. Verezzi and Julia (Elliotte Crowell), a dainty debutante, rise above in Zastrozzi as they play into their characters’ stupidity, allowing the audience to laugh at how clueless they are.
The characters’ silly banter and overripe personas made me laugh aloud several times during its two acts, but when the story became serious, the comedy loses steam. Verezzi’s tutor Victor (Matt Harrington) saves his master’s life many times and risks his own to face Zastrozzi. Yet, he is the least interesting character, despite Harrington’s impressive efforts. This is where Zastrozzi is held back. It may be just a step away from a brilliant comedy Oscar Wilde would be proud of, but there’s just too much sincerity.
ON THE COMPANY
Respected opinions of our audience
Tim Robbins: Academy Award Winning Actor, Writer, Director
The 7th Sign...bold and thought-provoking, edgy yet accessible. This group knows what theater needs and how to deliver. They are professional, talented and highly engaging, but most of all, they are a blast to watch. I expect to be seeing more great things from them in the future.
PRODUCTIONS
Spring, 2004
Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut
Winter, 2004
The Just Assassins by
Albert Camus
Fall, 2005
Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline written by
George F. Walker
ON THE COMPANY
Tim Robbins
Academy Award Winner
Spring, 2004
Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut
Winter, 2004
The Just Assassins by
Albert Camus
Fall, 2005
Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline written by
George F. Walker
ON THE COMPANY
Tim Robbins
Academy Award Winner