True False Theater Christopher Travlos in “Slaughterhouse-Five.â€Reviews of shows from the New York International Fringe Festival will appear on ArtsBeat through the festival’s close on Aug. 25. For more information, go to fringenyc.org.
Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five†may be too well known and too beloved for a stage adaptation of it to be judged on its own merits. At the opening performance of True False Theater’s version, the packed house was greeting scenes with the kind of laughter that signifies recognition of a friend rather than response to a joke.
Daria Tavana’s play leaves a lot of the novel’s threads (including pivotal ones) dangling, rather than completing the story lines, but the audience didn’t seem to care. It was enough to hear the sci-fi sound effect signifying that Billy Pilgrim (Jamie Effros), Vonnegut’s World War II soldier, was time traveling again, or to revel in the response of the people of Tralfamadore, the planet where Billy is beamed to learn a version of the meaning of life.
The play is cleverly staged and decently acted, with most of the novel’s significant characters represented if not fully realized. Anni Weisband is Montana Wildhack, the pornographic movie star who becomes Billy’s mate on Tralfamadore, and Rachel Berger is Valencia, his earthly wife.
The novel may be at heart an exploration of what would today be called post-traumatic stress syndrome, and this excerpted version hints at that, but it doesn’t have any of the power of Vonnegut’s book, seeming instead like merely a homage to it.
“Slaughterhouse-Five†continues through Aug. 20 at the Celebration of Whimsy, 21 Clinton Street, Lower East Side.
