Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s shaggy but zingingly relevant comedy Happy Birthday, Wanda June, now getting a ferociously funny revival from Wheelhouse Theater Company... The current president, who seems to cherish the very myth of manhood that Harold embodies, is the unacknowledged echo in the room through the whole performance. But here that echo is deeper, and it arrives with a pang of sympathy.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 1970 play, about a chauvinist blowhard aggressively clinging to antiquated social mores, has found its moment... Rarely has surrealist gallows humor been so adroitly deployed in the service of social criticism.

If there is an afterlife, I hope Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has had the opportunity to look down and watch the Wheelhouse Theater Company's excellent production of his hilarious, incisive
farce, Happy Birthday, Wanda June (directed by Jeff Wise with vitality, creativity, and respect). I'm sure Vonnegut would be thrilled with the show, although he would likely also be depressed at how timely it remains.

This darkly comic, often absurd and evocative play keeps the laughs coming while never letting its audience forget the bitter and ugly disparity between old-world misogynist machismo and new-age enlightened, sensitive yet sometimes impotent masculinity.

It pleases me no end to report that the actors assembled on stage of the Gene Frankel Theatre do not disappoint, especially in the performance by Jason O’Connell in the leading role of Harold Ryan. He is enough to see the show all on its own.