Happy Birthday, Wanda June

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

It’s Wanda June’s birthday, but she doesn’t have an opportunity to blow the candles out on her cake. A run in with an ice cream truck ended her young Earthly life. The cake was never picked up from the bakery.

(L to R) Heather Day, Mary Nepi, Aaron Carnevale, and Joe Wilson in a scene from Happy Birthday, Wanda June. Photographer: Walter L. Newton

Not to worry. Wanda June is quite happy, cavorting in Heaven with a Nazi named Siegfried von Koningswald. They play shuffleboard. Everyone in the cotton strewn Heaven plays, including Jesus and Judas.

Below them on the Earth-bound plain, cavorting of a different kind plays out in an upscale New York penthouse.

Playwright Kurt Vonnegut allowed his mind to dance between Odysseus returning to his wife Penelope, the Vietnam War, and the flower children spewing peace and love.

Odysseus’s travels reminded him of a high school girl friend’s father who wanted to quit his job to hunt for rubies in the Amazon Rain Forest. The culmination of all that dancing in his head churned out Happy Birthday, Wanda June.

The result is a fast-paced, hilarious concoction of very funny one-liners, a wide variety of mix bagged characters running from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Penelope, energetically played by Heather Day, has had to cope for eight years raising her son Paul (Matt Beckett/Briant Dinkel) on her own. Her macho, bull-headed husband, Harold (Aaron Carnevale) has been missing in the Amazon along with his trusty pilot Colonel Looseleaf Parker (Joe Wilson). Looseleaf was the one who dropped the bomb over Nagasaki. Bombs have been exploding in his head ever since, wobbling askew his equalibrium.

Surrounded by heads of innocent animals Harold has killed, Penelope juggles the attention of two suitors, Herb Shuttle (Jeffrey Haas), a vacuum cleaner salesman, and Dr. Norbert Wooley (Chris Bleu) who lives across the hall, wears tie dye shirts, flashes the peace sign continually, and doesn’t look or act as though he could cure anyone much less himself. Although Bleu doesn’t look old enough to play a doctor, he deliciously entraps the Hippie stereotype.

Paul (Dinkel) is arguable upset. Penelope has a date with Herb, confusing the issue when Norbert reveals he and Penelope are engaged. It is Harold’s Birthday, wherever he might be.

That’s where Wanda June enters the picture. Attempting to placate the situation, Herb picks up a cake. The only one available is Wanda June’s.

Into this mixed-up scenario walks Harold who thinks killing innocent animals and abusing women is a macho sign of manliness. With him is Looseleaf who jumps at every new fangled gadget he comes across. They’ve only been gone eight years and he acts like he’s never seen a vacuum cleaner before. Then again, maybe he hasn’t.

Directed by Robert Kramer, this production of Happy Birthday, Wanda June loses some of its funny lines with a relative inexperienced cast who have not yet mastered comic timing.

Some of Paul’s quipped lines are lost because of Dinkle’s physical stiffness. His facial expressions are marvelous, but his body seems uncertain where and how to move. Were he to relax, the audience could capture the sharp wit Vonnegut buries for Paul.

Mari Hayden Nepi is adorable as Wanda June. In her white cotton world, political differences matter not. Everyone is happy, and that’s what counts. Wade Wood as Von Konigswald gives a powerfully strong performance in his Nazi reflections while cavorting in Heaven.

Carevale brings shudders from his blowhard performance as Harold. He’s unusually realistic. His lines are funny. His attitude is not. He’s scary and stunning.

With a delightful set deigned by Producer Rick Bernstein, the Heavenly shuffleboard agents have a direct view over the pent-up penthouse while the eyes of the hunted animals hanging on the walls look on.

Day holds the cast together with Penelope’s growing spirit from bubbling enthusiasm, to soothing ruffled feathers, to standing up to Harold’s unreasonable demands, to finding composure when she finds strength to say no and walks out.

It’s satire all the way. This Miner’s Alley production provides a solid evening of entertainment, teasing with some interesting after thoughts on war, anti-war, men who kill and like it, with a comic slash of worldviews. Vonnegut’s play fits into the current world affairs as though it might have been written a month ago.