The Novel as a play (Gynter)

 I think that a play adaptation of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five would be a complete farce and a disrespect to his Vonnegut himself. Why you may ask? For the very simple reason that Vonnegut’s novels were not meant to be adapted into plays, films or musicals. They were just means to be read.

Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five would not work as a play is because it contains a non-linear plot. Vonnegut does not follow a traditional beginning, middle, and end in his novel. Billy’s incidents of time-travelling often don't take up more than a page in the novel. One minute Billy is in World War II Germany, the next he is a kid drowning at the bottom of a YMCA pool.  On stage, Vonnegut’s complex plot becomes a series of choppy, confusing remembrances. When I was reading the book, I would often have to re-read whole pages because of the fact that Vonnegut so often switched from one setting to another. It would be even harder for the audience to follow this confusing plot. The plot would also be very difficult to realize, as it would be very hard for stage managers to quickly switch from one setting to the next.

Another reason the novel could not be translated into a play is that the novel’s non-linear plot and constantly-changing setting leaves little or no room for character development. The audience will primarily focused on trying to keep up with the plot, and not be able to focus on the changes that major changes like Billy Pilgrim undergo. For this reason, the audience will not be able to create an emotional attachment to the main character, Billy Pilgrim.  Billy's post-war existence in suburban America is steeped in caricature. When presented on stage, Billy's domestic life, with his simple-minded wife and later his nagging daughter will seem like nothing more than a simple sitcom and audiences will miss the true messages that Vonnegut tried to present, such as the destructiveness of war, or the illusion of fate. This would be a great insult to Vonnegut’s hard work.

Vonnegut's darkly humorous novel is dramatic, but it is not overtly theatrical. This is because when writing his novels, Vonnegut is strongly against the idea of building up suspense for the reader, as stated in one of his rules for writing a short story: “Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.” When there is such a large lack of suspense in the novel, it is almost an impossible task to recreate a suspenseful play based on the novel. This lack of suspense will bore the audiences and create a general mood of disinterest in theatre. The play will just seem like a confusing biographic account of a possibly schizophrenic World War II veteran’s life.

This is a review of the Slaughterhouse Five play.

http://www.latheatrereview.com/2010/10/09/kurt-vonnegut%E2%80%99s-slaughterhouse-five-at-studio-stage-theatre/