Happy Birthday, Wanda June

While the city's theater critics revive the century-old debate about the death of Broadway at the tail end of a reasonably disappointing commercial season, reassurance can be found in a visit to the tiny Gene Frankel: a musty, impossibly crowded blackbox theater that is home to a remarkable revival of Kurt Vonnegut's 1971 Happy Birthday, Wanda June. I've been hearing about this production for a while, beginning when Wendy Caster raved about it early in its run, so when the run was extended and I stumbled into press tickets, I jumped. I'm so glad I did.

Jeremy Daniel

A scathing case-study of toxic masculinity written long before "toxic masculinity" was a common phrase, Happy Birthday, Wanda June subverts Homer's Odyssey and relocates it in a strange, ridiculous dreamland that boomerangs between reality and some droll netherworld, which could just as easily be the late Vietnam era in the US as it could be purgatory. The revival remains rooted in the American past--those groovy, polyester costumes!--while simultaneously reflecting the frustrating fever-dream state of the nation right now. Therein lies both Wanda June's powerful appeal and the heartbreak of it: must a strange, dusty old piece that so efficiently bottled the darkness of the edgy, moody past have to be so damned apt again?