© The New York Times Company
February 17, 1983

'Wanda June' Returns
By HERBERT MITGANG

The title character of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s madcap play ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June'' is in heaven, the casualty of an ice-cream truck, but all's well in her theatrical cloudland because she is playing shuffleboard up there with a Nazi named Siegfried von Koningswald.

Below them, on the earth level of the homey Equity Library Theater stage, there are other lovable characters, including a former American colonel who dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki and ever since has been blubbering, a vacuum-cleaner salesman with Silent Majority views, and an antinuke physician who doesn't look as if he could heal himself or anyone else. And then there's the chap who excuses his odd behavior with the explanation that he never made Eagle Scout.

The time is 1970, or B-52 time over Vietnam, and the flexible setting is a New York City apartment. To compound the plot, the two leading characters may remind you vaguely -very vaguely - of Odysseus, here called Harold Ryan, and his wife, Penelope, who bears the same first name as the Queen of Ithaca in the Greek legend. So in the background of the tumult and shouting (there's a lot of both on stage) are several wars or antiwars: Homer's, Vonnegut's, Vietnam and maybe the next one. Search below the surface of the domestic comedy and maybe you'll find a modern morality play. But don't look too hard because what we have in the entertaining evening is the satirical novelist juggling his human bestiary. If you haphazardly juxtaposed some of the pages of Slapstick and Slaughterhouse-Five, you might come up with the spirit of ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June.''

In the clever set designed by Joe Mobilia, we learn how the Ryans first met before he wandered off to his games of war and hunting. A cardboard Cadillac appears, with the blowhard Ryan, strongly played by David Adamson, behind the wheel.
Penelope, in the person of Joyce Cohen, is not unraveling Laertes's shroud; she's selling burgers as a car-hop. The sprightly actress would turn heads in any man's hamburger heaven.

Their marriage, however, is not heaven-sent. Somehow, Ryan equates the tocsin of war with the artillery of sex. Returning home, he lives under the sign of stuffed animal heads. When the doorbell rings, it doesn't -instead, it is a recorded lion roar, courtesy of Abercrombie & Fitch. In this charade between Harold and Penelope, the author makes you choose sides quickly, and you hope that the carhop will send her hunter packing.

Although Vonnegut as playwright has a lot of unsolved carpentry problems in ''Happy Birthday, Wanda June'' - only a Thornton Wilder could get away with performers' telling the audience when an act is over - his fans will enjoy his alarums and asides.

Under Elowyn Castle's direction, a professional cast that includes lively moments by Marcia Savella, Ward Asquith, Dale Place, Richard Voigts and James Mathers move quickly and rather loudly through three acts. Mr. Vonnegut's play, which originally ran at the Theater de Lys and Edison Theater in 1970-71, is a worthwhile revival in the Equity Library Theater's 40th anniversary season. It will run through Feb. 27.

It's 1970 Again
''Happy Birthday, Wanda June'' by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

• Directed by Elowyn Castle
• Scenic design byJoe Mobilia
• Costume design by Margie Peterson
• Lighting design by Mark Weingartner
• Sound design and original music by Hal Schuler
• Production stage manager: Penny Landau.
• Presented by the Equity Library Theater, 310 Riverside Drive.
• Cast
  • Penelope Ryan... Joyce Cohen
  • Paul Ryan... Mark Ballous
  • Dr. Norbert Woodly... Dale Place
  • Herb Shuttle... James Mathers
  • Harold Ryan... David Adamson
  • Looseleaf Harper... Ward Asquith
  • Wanda June... Victoria Gabrielle Platt
  • Siegfried van Konigswalkd... Richard Voigts
  • Mildred... Marcia Savella

© THE NEW YORK TIMES