| Amused Einstein (Jordan Jarvis) laughs hysterically at a simple math problem as the barmaid (Emily Pheils) looks on during Owens’ production of “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.”(Photos: Aaron Carpenter/Sentinel-Tribune) |
Audience members attending the Owens Community College production of "Picasso at the Lapin
Agile" would do well to check out the set as they are waiting for the play to start.
Steve Martin’s philosophical comedy is set in a bar the Lapin Agile, or Agile Rabbit, in Paris, and at
first glance it looks straightforward enough. A bar with bottles, tables and a sentimental pastoral
painting on the back wall.
But then look at the doors, obliquely angled, and note the painter’s palette shapes cast about and a
large frame looms over the scene.
These details create the setting for the cascade of comic abstraction that flows as soon as the play
opens with the strains of a customer coming into the bar bellowing "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay."
"Picasso at the Lapin Agile, directed by Jeremy Meier," is opens today in the Mainstage
Theatre.
Martin’s comic meditation on genius and how it shapes the future begins with the most plebeian of
exchanges between the singing customer, Gaston (Matthew Johnston) and the bartender Freddy (John Toth).
Their mundane conversation about the song is cut short by the arrival of Einstein (Jordan Jarvis) who
has arrived for an assignation with a countess.
He’s supposed to meet her at Bar Rouge, but as he explains: "There’s as much chance of her coming
here accidentally as her going to Bar Rouge on purpose."
The play bounces between ribald Tom foolery and philosophical musings, as people wander into the bar.
Some are there in hopes of meeting the young artist Picasso (Zakk Post). That includes the beautiful
Suzanne (Morgan Rife), who had a one-night stand with the artist, and art dealer Sagot (Silvester
Rodriguez IV) ever anxious to buy work by this rising star.
| Gaston (Matthew Johnston) |
Freddy’s philandering wife Germaine (Emily Pheils) bridges the two worlds. She tells her husband she was
late because she spent so much time in front of the mirror. "A mirror is like a mind; if you don’t
use it, it loses its ability to reflect."
The comedy arises from Einstein’s other-worldly air, his inability to see anything simply. Freddy is
baffled by a joke he heard about a pie-shaped like the letter "e." Einstein discourses on how
the joke is only funny if the letter is "e." He goes through the alphabet explaining why no
other letter would work. All the while I’m trying to figure out a hypothetical punchline involving that
pastry "e" as part of Einstein’s greatest hit equation: e+mc2 and "pi."
This play’s ramblings have a way of worming themselves into the brain.
Though set in 1904, the play really takes place in an anachronistic netherworld where Gaston can suddenly
burst into the song: "When a man loves a woman."
Picasso arrives on the scene like a whirlwind. He’s teeming with passion for art and women. He’s at home
both in world of the bar and the other worldly sphere that Einstein inhabits. "Take it from me
boys, the man can paint," he declares about Matisse.
And Picasso tells Suzanne, who he doesn’t recognize that: "I meant everything I said that night. I
just forgot who I said it to."
The cast does well to let this tangle of words flow. The characters, who also include the huckster
Schmendiman (Joshua Smith), the countess and female admirer (Rose DiNardo), and a charismatic visitor
from the future (Jeremy Stone), can seem more like premises in a philosophical argument than flesh and
blood people. But the actors give them the flush of humanity.
That visitor from the future, for example, is very protective of his shoes. He brings a flash of show biz
to the play that threatens to tip the whole exercise into absurdity, but the play maintains its
quizzical balance, leaving the audience if a little confused, certainly amused.
