Just before the end of World War II, an American POW being held in a basement slaughterhouse in Dresden survived a bombing that killed most of the city’s inhabitants. The man’s name was Kurt Vonnegut and he went on to become one of the most beloved cult writers of the 20th century.
Vonnegut is more than an influence in And So It Goes, which premiered at the Factory Theatre this month—he’s a persona. The tragedy-haunted author, whose characters are some of the greatest hallucinators of all time, couldn’t have picked a more suitable place to materialize than in the fantasies of Gwen and Ned, a middle-class couple faced with the sudden onset of schizophrenia in their 24-year-old daughter, Karen. Like the hero of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (from which the play takes its title) they find themselves turning to a hallucination—that of the deceased, endearingly weird writer—to help them process an unspeakable tragedy that falls in their laps.
But Vonnegut isn’t the only writer to make a return with this play; And So It Goes is the first in 10 years from George F. Walker, the Canadian playwright (and director of this production) whose list of awards and accomplishments barely fits in his bio paragraph. Walker, like Vonnegut, is known for his ability to make us giggle at very sad things, not because we don’t care about the characters, but because we feel close enough to them to have a laugh. For the first part of this play, with the exception of a few merciful one-liners, it’s impossible to laugh—it’s just too sad. As it turns out, all the grief in the first half is a calculated wind-up for the second half, when Walker’s trademark black comedy kicks in, and hard.
Regardless of whether this stuff is your cup of tea, there’s no arguing about the execution, as the performances are gorgeous. The hijacked thought-process of Jenny Young’s Karen is so real for her that she presents it as practically a physical force. Karen’s illness makes her terrifyingly unpredictable: you can never tell whether she’s about to say something illuminating or violently lash out. Lots of references are made to the screaming voices in Karen’s head, and Young’s at times ear-piercing, wince-producing performance gives us some idea of what those voices might sound like. Young is at her best not when Karen loses control, though, but when she tries to hold herself together. In one scene she stands in court, clamping her arms to her body, attempting to keep herself still as she trembles with rage, and tells the judge about the list she’s made of people who deserve imprisonment more than she does. She’s so utterly desperate to be taken seriously that you want to believe everything she’s saying.
Her parents, meanwhile, have a more casual relationship with their hallucinations, but end up with nearly as much real-life trouble. As their possessions dwindle, the couple find themselves in a bizarre midlife crisis of tragic and comical proportions. Stratford patriarch Peter Donaldson’s Ned is like a long-lost Shakespearian hero who’s forgotten all his big words. This genial financial advisor doesn’t look like he’s had a reason to be angry all his life. But when he suddenly gets one, his confused attempts at revenge—on someone, anyone—are as sinister and pathetic as his awkward but determined use of the F-word. Martha Burns’ ex-Latin teacher Gwen, whose extreme grief never brings her so low as to make a grammatical error, manages to play the role of the last sensible person around without becoming a controlling shrew.
Jerry Franken’s Vonnegut, with fluffy white hair and a funny cardigan, is part Einstein, part Mr. Rogers: he knows something we don’t, and we’ll never really get what he’s trying to say, but having him there is reassuring all the same. As he looks into the sky and laughs at one of Ned’s jokes (what could make a fan more proud?) he looks exactly like someone who’s been, as Vonnegut once claimed, where the flying saucers come from.
And So It Goes runs at the Factory Theatre through February 28. For more information, visit factorytheatre.ca.
