Kurt Vonnegut: My Lives’ Stories
A one-man show written and performed by Todd Wronski, My Lives’ Stories, his first words as he enters the stage and sees the audience are: “Have we met?” Yet he is the one who is instantly recognisable, with the unkempt hair and beard and the ruffled and rumpled clothes, the unmistakable mannerisms and inflections of the late American writer Kurt Vonnegut.
Famed for his lectures and noting that in his life Samuel Clemens made more money from talking than writing, he gives the audience a brief lesson on the structure of the short story following basic outlines to which they may apply their own details before launching into the more complex story of his own life, formatted to the same template.
Constructed entirely of Vonnegut’s own words, Wronski captures the memory of Vonnegut, intelligent, kindly, a great writer but a terrible soldier as recounted profoundly in Slaughterhouse-5, aware of the madness of the world and the consequences of actions, commenting that “true terror is seeing your (former school classmates) running the country” and on America’s deference to the bullet as the solution for every problem.
Does it lack structure? It’s Vonnegut; of course it does, a ramble in the countryside taking in the unexpected sights and enjoying the moment while summoning the courage to bring up the subjects most painful, finding the correct words to frame a traumatic memory, but while the straight line may be the most efficient route between two points it is never the most interesting.
Kurt Vonnegut My Lives’ Stories runs at theSpace on North Bridge until Saturday 13th August
