Step right up Gods and gentlemen . . .
Equity Showcase (April 5 - April 28)
review by Louis Lopardi . . April 9, 2001
What do you make of a three ring circus that offers some profound truths, and makes both the arcane of particle physics and the actions of men understandable? Paul Mullin's bizarre and beautiful play manages to do just this. The Sonata's "main theme" is a freak accident during a routine bomb-core test at Los Alamos in 1946, caused by Slotin, and which rendered him a walking dead man with a one week expiration date. As Anouilh has shown us, this is the stuff that gives tragedians the chance to howl at the world. Mullin's characters do not so much howl like King Lear, as witticise and conjecture, like the physicists adept at mental gymnastics that they are.
This was a totally engaging production. David P. Moore's direction ably solved the problems of the theater's two-sided stage. He caught the spirit of the play and created a visual counterpoint to complement it's musical structure. Period costumes by Amela Baksic and props by Petol Weekes were perfect. (Gary Smoot created the elegant solution to the necessarily complex core-testing prop.) Rachel Hauck made a Set Design which toyed with the industrial chic of the space itself, playing with the structural integrity of the theater's mechanical elements, and in a period color scheme at that. A Sound Design by Rob Gould framed all with period swing music, then made somewhat of a leitmotif out of a tempestuous middle period Beethoven sonata - wholly apropos since one of the physicists at Los Alamos did in fact obsessively play Beethoven sonatas. Greg McPherson's Lighting Design was not intimidated by the low-ceilinged space, and made the most of simple coloration. For example, a scene in which the delusional Slotin sees himself visited by the physicist Daghlian (played by a multi-faceted Matthew Lawler) who died similarly some months earlier, suddenly switches to Slotin visiting the dying Daghlian- a subtle shift in tonality clinched the flashback. If indeed that's what it was. Time/space juxtapositions abounded, and reinforced the musical structure of the play. The accident theme was "recapitulated" over and again, and ultimately "varied" into the pompous official version released by the military, - an absurdly funny bit; well written, acted, and directed.
And absurdity was in fact the counterpoint for the evening, especially during the "development section" comprised mostly of dreams and halucinations by the dying Slotin. Sometimes delightful, as when God appears in the guise of President Truman (Bill Cwikowski in a star turn). Other times it just went too far out, as when Slotin - who frequently assumes the persona of the anti-scientist Dr. Mengele - suddenly becomes Mengele as emcee leading the cast in a song and dance production number to "In The Mood". The moment owed a tremendous debt to Dennis Potter's "The Singing Detective", as have similar moments in recent Off-Broadway (Paula Caplan's "Call Me Crazy" for example). It was well done; it simply went on too long, becoming a deadening end-point in itself rather than an absurdist underscoring.
I first thought of some of the principals as too young, but we forget how young some of these extraordinary men actually were, men who had the fate of the world in their hands. Philip Morison - richly and superbly played by Allyn Burrows - was barely thirty at the time. Slotin himself was only thirty five. In terms of character development this was essentially a one man show. Slotin is all, much as supposedly the dreamer is all characters in his dream. Each principal played many subsidiary characters as well, but these were thinly drawn, to the point of being glib- even fatuous. Presumably they were being seen through the drugged haze of a dying Slotin, but even J. Robert Oppenheimer, (miscast in Ezra Knight who was otherwise excellent as Major Coakley) who in 1946 would still be revered for the complex mental architect that he was, was portrayed as a huckster - one of many such notables cheapened into easy marks by an underground comics kind of mentality. Or were we to believe that this is the way the brilliant Louis Slotin really saw other brilliance.
Most supporting characterizations were slighted in the writing. A suggested growing emotional attachment by the nurse (Amy Love gave a memorable performance - well supported by Richmond Hoxie's Dr. Hempelmann) would have been more credible and had greater impact if it were shown gradually developing. Her eventual pronouncement to Slotin that he simply did not have a white blood cell count anymore would then have been heartbreaking instead of just another glaring breach of medical ethics by an emotional female. One happy exception was Slotin's father - a role easy to overact but which was magnificently stated by the conscientious Joel Rooks, who also gave a perfect cameo of Einstein (but didn't quite have General Groves).
William Salyers carried the lion's share in the production as Louis Slotin himself. He easily secured the man's basic character and sense of humor, then went on to eventually show all the stages of grief that the rapidly dying are heir to - all while playing within the absurdist elements of the production. It was a towering performance. One minor quibble: His delivery of a final line about the universe being a strange place, but that which is outside it even stranger; this is a profound sentiment - especially given all that the fertile mind of the playwright had shown us - yet the delivery opening night was coy rather than awestruck. Whoever made that decision, it was a shameful one; a wink and a nod do not a happy ending make.
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