Lesser Vonnegut

​            North Coast Rep in Solana Beach is presenting a curious olio of Kurt Vonnegut adaptations called Who Am I This Time? A folksier than folksy James Leaming anchors the three inter-connected tales about amour, each of them set at the fictitious North Crawford Mask & Wig Club in North Crawford, Conn. The most entertaining of the three is the middle offering, the one actually based on the Vonnegut 1961 short story “Who Am I This Time?” In it, shrinking violets Harry Nash (Jason Maddy) and Helene Shaw (Christina Flynn) comically heat up when playing Stanley Kowalski and wife Stella in a community production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
            In general the lessons about love are familiar and homespun – not what one tends to associate with the man who wrote “Slaughterhouse Five.” But so it goes.