Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five adapted by Eric Simson. The Brockley Jack Sudio Theatre, Brockley Road, London SE4 to 19 October 2024.

5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“A mountain climbed.”

Performed by a cast of four this attempt to put Vonnegut's complex novel about the fire bombing of Dresden, aliens, the abduction of Billy Pilgrim, whose life and death it follows directed by Douglas Baker is quite simply stunning. The novel deals all sorts of issues about life and death and war and morality which should have defeated a cast of four in a fringe theatre with limited resources but the video designer - also the director - has solved the problem of showing what happened to Billy by creating a transparent screen on which images can be projected and behind which actors can perform while in front of it they can also perform sometimes with the screen as background, sometimes to and through it. The ingenuity is boundless. Given what Israel is currently doing remembering, or simply informing people, of the fire bombing of Dresden on the April 13 to 15 in 1945 lends an urgency to what one is watching. Then, of course, came the atomic bomb. The events in Gaza and the Lebanon may seem a world away from SE4 but bombs also fell there once upon a time. The versatility of the cast is impressive and it is an evening that leaves one with something to think about which is pretty much the impact the book has. Why five stars? I don't think it is perfectly done or even performed but for scaling a mountain, an Everest of one, this So It Goes Theatre production deserves them.

Cast

Sofia Engstrand

Alex Crook

Ben Howarth

Ethan Reid.

Creatives

Director – Douglas Baker.

Sound Design – Calum Perrin.

Video Design – Douglas Baker.

Lighting Design – Laurel Marks.

Movement Director – Matthew Coulton.