Review: Slaughterhouse-Five, Southwark Playhouse

Patrick McAndrew in Slaughterhouse-Five, Southwark Playhouse. Photo: Henry Hu. Is it possible to adapt a complex, time-hopping novel with aliens for the stage? This production of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1968 anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five started life at Brockley Jack Studio and has now transferred to the Southwark Playhouse, and there is plenty that is inventive and slick in how it is staged. It’s the life story of Billy Pilgrim (Patrick McAndrew), who became a prisoner of war in the Second World War and survived the Dresden bombing. The action jumps back and forth between life before, during and after the war, including the time he claims to have spent on Tralfamadore, having been abducted by aliens. With a cast of just four, the story is populated (and told) with the help of multimedia. There is a screen at the back of that stage and second, thin gauzy one a few metres forward with various projections appearing on both. On a thin, gauzy screen, information such as dates, quotes and…