Cast of the production that opened October 7, 1970 at the Theatre de Lys, NYC and ran through 142 performances, closing at the Edison Theatre on March 14, 1971.

KEVIN McCARTY... Harold Ryan
KEITH CHARLES... Dr. Norbert Woodly
NICOLAS COSTER... Herb Shutle
WILLIAM HICKEY... Col. Looseleaf Harper
MARSHA AMSON... Penelope Ryan
LOIS TURENNE... Siegrfried von Konigswald
STEVEN PAUL... Paul Ryan
ARIANE MUNKER... Wanda June
ELLEN DANO... Wanda June (II)
PAMELA SAUNDERS... Mildred Ryan
JESS OSUNA... Understudy for the men
DIANE WEST... Understudy for the women

The New York Times reviewed the 1983 restaging of ''Wanda June''.

Script. Though officially out of print the text of ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June'' is not hard to locate. You can request Amazon.com to secure a used copy for you or you can sniff about your local used book marts.

Support local Vonnegut productions! Directed by longtime Vonnegut intimate Robert B. Weide, ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June'' was recently presented for six weeks (October 25-December 9, 2001) to unaminously positive reviews in Hollywood, CA. Kurt Vonnegut faxed thoughts on the play before opening note.

If you'd like a mention on this page, let me know of your upcoming ''Wanda June'' production.

The Movie. ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June'' was comttied to film in 1971. It was produced by Lester Goldsmith, directed by Mark Robson and starred Rod Steiger, Susannah York, George Gizzard, Don Murray, and William Hickey. This is a film so bad that Vonnegut is said to have attempted to have his name removed from the credits. He says in Palm Sunday: ''This proved impossible, however. I alone had done the thing the credits said I had done. I had really written the thing.''

A Play by
Kurt Vonnegut
1968

© Gale Research, Detroi, MI
Contemporary Authors, 49. ''After the publication of Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut entered a period of depression during which he vowed, at one point, to never write another novel. He concentrated, instead, on lecturing, teaching, and finishing a play, ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June,'' that he had begun several years earlier. The play, which ran Off-Broadway from October, 1970 to March, 1971, received mixed reviews. Newsweek's Jack Kroll wrote that 'almost every time an American novelist writes a play he shows up most of our thumb-tongued playwrights, who lack the melody of mind, the wit, dash and accuracy of Saul Bellow and Bruce Jay Friedman.  And the same thing must be said of the writing in ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June,'' . . . Vonnegut's dialogue is not only fast and funny, with a palpable taste and crackle, but it also. means something.  And his comic sense is a superior one; ''Wanda June'' has as many laughs as anything by Neil Simon.' On the other hand, in the New Republic Stanley Kauffmann called it 'a disaster, full of callow wit, rheumatic invention, and dormitory profundity.... The height of its imagination is exemplified by a scene in Heaven between a golden-haired little girl and a Nazi Gauleiter in which they discuss the way Jesus plays shuffleboard.'''

© Gale Research, 1989
Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: Broadening Views, 1968-1988. ''I felt after I finished Slaughterhouse-Five that I didn't have to write at all anymore if I didn't want to,'' [Vonnegut] says in Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons. ''It was the end of some sort of career.'' Pleased with the film, he spoke of being ''through with novels,'' with ''spooks in a novel'' rather than flesh-and-blood characters, announcing, ''It's plays from now on.''

In the prologue to his play, ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June'' (1971), he tells of his effort to write himself a new family in a company of actors. The play, which opened on 7 October 1970 and ran Off Broadway until 14 March 1971, was based on one he had written some fifteen years earlier.

It derives in part from his aversion to the Hemingwayesque hero who demonstrates his manhood by killing beautiful rare animals that never hurt him and by abusing women. It also stems from his interest in Penelope in Homer's Odyssey, one of the works included in the Great Books program that Vonnegut and his wife conducted on Cape Cod. Indeed, the earlier play was called ''Penelope.''

While Slaughterhouse-Five makes the point that all people need to feel that they retain some dignity, ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June'' shows a proud ''hero'' whose false sense of dignity denies any kind of dignity to women, nonwhites, and a good many other men.

WANDA JUNE:  Happy Birthday Wanda June  ·  1983 NY Times Review RELATED CATEGORIES:  Dramatic Works  ·  Complete Writings OTHER VISUALS:  Between Time & Timbuktus  ·  Harrison Bergeron

© 1997-2005 Chris Huber, Durham NC (USA)  ·  Last Updated 02/05/05

Also by Chris Huber: Whyaduck Productions  ·  Which Circle?