Breakfast of Champions Review

Written by Devanshi Shah

4 Star rating

Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut Jr). Theatre Guild Student Society. Little Theatre, University of Adelaide. Last show 8th July 2023.

CONTENT WARNING: Violence, mental illness, racism and racial slurs, mentions to suicide, sexually explicit language, and swearing.

The University of Adelaide Theatre Guild (UATG) has an eclectic set of plays for the audience to relish to commemorate  UATG’s 85th year. Presented by the Theatre Guilds Student Society, Director Taylor Fernadez’s adaptation of Breakfast of Champions based on the homonymous novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr, was an exceptional play that I enjoyed on its opening night. 

The eccentricity of the characters and the rawness of the sometimes ugly human emotions shines through the stellar performances of the entire cast who gave this chaotic masterpiece the justice it deserves.

The play revolves around two individuals from vastly different societal stratas; Kilgore Trout, a failed fiction writer, and Dwayne Hoover, a wealthy Pontiac dealer. Trout seems to have chosen pessimism as a way of life, his novels almost appear like the works of an alter-ego Vonnegut himself. Dwayne, who seems to have it all due to his wealthy status, is currently losing his mind due to the bad chemicals in his brain. An ill-fated meeting between these two leads to a series of rather unfortunate events in the fictional town of Midland, situated in the United States of America. 

Throughout the play we see a generous sprinkling of Vonnegut’s dark humour laced with social issues which throws light to the horrors in the United States of America without ever losing its humorous appeal. The eccentricity of the characters and the rawness of the sometimes ugly human emotions shines through the stellar performances of the entire cast who gave this chaotic masterpiece the justice it deserves. The leads Robert Baulderstone and Tommy Raets encapsulate the quirks of Trout and Hoover beautifully, giving the audience an insight to the past of their characters and building it up to reach the final act. 

The functional yet minimal set-design, apt costumes, and visuals excerpted from the book added to the strong screenplay to give a perfect mix of an outstanding play. There is one show remaining, on the 8th of July, and, if you miss it, I promise you’ll be having more than doodley squat regrets!