Picasso, Einstein Combine for Laughs

November 5, 2009 • By Brandon Hyman,
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Einstein and Picasso walk into a bar. No, it’s not another mildly funny joke; it’s the hilarious fictional chance meeting that sparks Steve Martin’s absurd comedy “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” at the Latimer-Shaeffer Theatre.

The play opens in Paris in 1904 and is set in a simple bar, the Lapin Agile, where owner Freddy (senior Dylan Morris) serves a 25-year-old, unpublished Albert Einstein (junior Grey Robertson).

The plot is relatively simple, and the comedy stems from the sheer absurdity of the situation, the characters’ frequent bursts through the fourth wall: scratching their heads when the lighting changes and actually leaping off the stage and grabbing a playbill from an audience member.

As director Wolf J. Sherrill, assistant theatre professor at JMU explained, ‘Picasso’ “is not… a Neil Simon comedy,” meaning it’s in no way realistic. He also commented on the difficulty of directing such a comedy without an audience. “[I say] all right, I think they’re gonna laugh here: Let’s set it up.”

Morris describes the cast’s frustration performing to an audience of crew members who have seen the show dozens of times saying, “I think everybody’s just so excited and jacked and ready for an audience. We need some feedback and I definitely think it’s time for it.”

Sherrill also seemed to want an audience to see the four weeks of work the cast and crew have done and looks forward to Tuesday “when the last character [the audience] arrives.” Still, as more characters come into the bar, enough nonsense and quarrelling appear to keep the actors engaged.

Picasso (senior Brandon Shockney)enters, and the struggle between him and Einstein about the beauty of art and science arises as each contends his work will shape the next century. The bar’s resident old man and frequent urinator Gaston (junior Brandon Duncan) commented that things always come in threes and that there must be another whose work will also shape the century. The inventor Schmendiman, played by junior Nathan Taylor who grew a glorious moustache especially for the role, burst into the bar touting his revolutionary building material, schmendimite.

Although Schmendiman’s ideas never come to fruition, he represents consumerism and his passion shows in every irrational idea he announces. His building material for example, made from “equal parts of asbestos, kitten paws and radium,” can only be used in several cities but he still touts its ability to “change the century.”

“Wolf likes to call this his passion play,” Taylor said. “Picasso loves his art, you know Einstein loves his theories and every character has to be passionate about something.”

The passion pervades not only the performances but also the characters’ surroundings onstage.

JMU alumnus and seasoned set designer and art director John Burgess has returned as director of technical productions and oversaw the set design for the play with input and help from junior studio art major Julia Kennedy.

Because of the advanced technical nature of the set, Burgess focused on how the set works while Kennedy concentrated on its appearance.

“One of Julia’s ideas was that the world felt kinda like a painting,” Burgess said sitting in front of the student-painted set filled with long strokes of the paintbrush along the walls giving evidence of the artist’s hand.

Kennedy’s inspiration also came from her weekend visit to the real bar in Paris while she studied abroad in London last summer. She absorbed her surroundings and combined her knowledge of Picasso’s work with the requirements of the script and produced the intriguing bar now atop the Latimer-Shaeffer stage. “This is more like a puzzle. This wasn’t a normal set design,” Kennedy said.

Steve Martin’s unusual script throws the characters into a bar, and at points it seems like it’s just an excuse to get laughs. However, it borders on the profound, making the audience question the purpose of art versus science, and which one truly shaped the 20th century. Martin is clever not to give answers or to become too philosophical and towards the play’s end a mysterious visitor from the future enters to make the characters question their respective arts.

With the cast’s passionate performances, the unique set and Martin’s entertaining script, the show captivates the audience while in the theatre and long after the final bows.

Contact Brandon Hyman at hymanba@jmu.edu

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