The cast of Slaughterhouse Five (photograph by Sarah Walker)

Slaughterhouse-Five is a famously strange and searing critique on war. Billy Pilgrim, an optometry student from New York, is drafted into the army during World War II. Taken prison by the Germans, he experiences his first episode of time-tripping and begins to move backwards and forwards in time. Billy survives the Dresden bombings of February 1945 and returns to New York, where he settles into suburban life. Through bouts of illness and a stint in a human zoo on an alien planet, he continues to slip through time, heading backwards and forwards, witnessing his own birth and death many times.

Adapting Slaughterhouse-Five to the stage was always going to be a difficult task, but given its abstraction and absurdity the work has much theatrical potential. To watch this being squandered over nearly three hours would be painful if it weren’t so boring. In the novel, silliness fuels tragedy and Vonnegut uses structure as much as language to critique the human condition. One of the strengths of theatre is its ability to embody abstract ideas and to make emotional connections with audiences through real-time, human-to-human contact. Kilpatrick could have used this to her advantage. Instead, her literal rendering of Vonnegut’s scenes leaves no room for the audience’s imagination.

Sam Barson featured with the whole cast of Slaughterhouse Five (photo by Sarah Walker)

Where the novel plays with the reader’s relationship to the author, Kilpatrick’s adaptation borders on the didactic. In Vonnegut’s novel, the narrator’s direct address creates an intimate relationship between reader and writer. The audience is not only drawn into Vonnegut’s world but is in his head as he creates, remembers, and struggles with it. Vonnegut also appears as a character in the play; along with many of the ensemble members, he often breaks the fourth wall to address the audience. But onstage, as chalkboards are rolled around and actors explain the story to the audience, any sense of intimacy is lost. It feels more like a university lecture than a sci-fi exploration of the horror and inhumanity of war.

This could be a failed attempt at Brecht’s epic theatre or Beckett’s absurdist theatre. But there is an uneasy mismatch between the play’s writing, direction, and acting that leaves the production in a stylistic no man’s land that works against Vonnegut’s source material. Even absurdist theatre requires some realism and immediacy if the audience is to be affected. If the action is presented using little more than bland line readings and choreographed blocking, it’s hard for the audience to connect or care. Perhaps Kilpatrick’s direction doesn’t do her script justice and it might have benefited from the vision of another creative artist.

The actors would certainly have benefited from a dedicated director who might have given the fledgling cast the confidence to carry off such a technically complicated play. The cast is made up of students and recent graduates, and while their youth drives home the tragedy of child-adult soldiers, their lack of experience is palpable. Except for Sam Barson’s Billy Pilgrim, who is charming in his gormlessness, each actor appears to be inside his or her own bubble, disconnected from one another, the audience, and the script.

Sam Barson, Talia Zipper, Simran Giria, and Caitlin Duff in Slaughterhouse Five (photograph by Sarah Walker)

Dil Kaur’s costume design and Justin Gardam’s sound design are technically proficient but unimaginative. Jason Lehane’s set is made up of portable blackboards in different shapes and sizes, which provides a neutral and changeable backdrop for a wide range of locations, but it is conceptually clumsy. The lighting is the strongest part of the production; it is subtle and creative, evoking time and place as well as emotion.

As technology develops and humans get better and better at killing one another, Slaughterhouse-Five is as relevant now as it was when it was published. Vonnegut’s novel may be absurd, but it is still eloquent and moving. Sadly, this production is neither.

Slaughterhouse Five is showing at Theatre Works from 24 April to 5 May 2019. Performance attended: 29 April.