There’s a great moment early on in Steve Martin’s surrealist comedy “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” when the patrons of the titular Paris watering hole are trading predictions of what they expect the budding 20th Century to look like.
Some of their circa 1904 predictions are dead on. Others are hilariously reversed from the world we know. However, as Martin penned the play in 1993, obviously pondering the then-quickly approaching 21st century in much the same way as the characters did the previous one, much the same way we are now still pondering it while staring down the barrel of a new decade — the point is well made.
The concepts that the play’s characters obsess over as they wait and while away Oct. 8, 1904 still obsess us today. The most important of these are the commonalities of the creative process that leads to great advances in both science and art — indeed science as a kind of art, and vice versa which is now an essential part of the modern paradigm.
The two characters primarily driving the course of the conversation are Albert Einstein (played by
Tim Takechi in the Bainbridge Performing Arts production) and Pablo Picasso (Cooper Harris Turner).
Both icons are on the verge of immortality when their paths cross: Einstein would publish his special theory of relativity in 1905, and Picasso would paint his proto-Cubist masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” in 1907.
The two are joined by an eccentric cast of bystanders, including a surely French philosopher, Picasso’s latest paramour, his agent, the bartender and his flirtatious mistress, an idiot inventor and also a mysterious and charismatic visitor (a dark-haired singer time-warped in from a later era).
Directed by Teresa Thuman, the show will run at BPA from Oct. 7 through Oct. 23. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. A special pay-what-you-can preview is planned for 7:30 p.m. Thursday,Oct. 6, and a special opening night reception is 6:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7.
Thuman leads a cast featuring both familiar faces and newcomers, including Matt Manguso (as Freddy), Fred Saas (Gaston), Melissa Fenwick (Germaine), Madison Jade Jones (Suzanne), Chris Martinez (Sagot), Luke Sayler (Charles Dabernow Schemendiman), Jennifer Pippin-Montanez (The Countess) and Max Martina (as the mysterious visitor).
Tickets, $29 for adults, $24 for seniors, and $21 for students, youth, military and teachers, may be purchased online at www.bainbridgeperformingarts.org, by phone at 206-842-8569, or in person at BPA (200 Madison Ave. North). BPA box office hours are 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, and one hour prior to shows.
Thuman, who previously directed BPA’s productions of “Hair,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “The Producers,” “Noises Off,” “Secret Garden,” “Urinetown,” “Kiss Me, Kate,” and “Little Shop of Horrors,” said the play was one she had enjoyed in the past and was excited to direct for BPA.
“It’s very popular,” she said.
“It’s a fun piece. A lot of it’s looking at what he was writing in ’93, ’94 and ’95,” Thuman said of Martin, “and seeing what is it that’s pertinent now.
“I wouldn’t say we’ve updated it in any way,” Thuman explained. “Just kind of brought a modern, a little more contemporary sensibility to it.”
The story begins naturally enough, the director said, with characters entering the bar and just talking with one another. It takes a sharp twist later, though, and involves time travel, meta references and surrealist humor in an almost Kafkaesque way.
“It’s kind of modern funny in that sense,” Thuman said. “Martin’s a funny guy.”
The humor is also what drew many of the cast members to the project, including co-leading man Takechi, who said he never before imagined he’d get the chance to play the world’s most recognizable genius.
“I didn’t think that a Japanese American like me would ever play a German Jew,” Takechi laughed. “I think this obviously isn’t historical fiction and I look at it as I’m not so much playing Einstein as I’m playing a symbol of Einstein, the idea of the scientific rational point of view that’s coming of age in this 20th Century world where that nexus of ideas and technology was actually coming to fruition.”
Takechi said he did a bit of research in preparing for the role, but was wary of getting too bogged down in details that might distract him from the comedy.
“I read a biography on [Einstein],” he said. “Although I stopped about after he wrote his paper on the special theory of relativity, just to kind of see what kind of person he was as a young man before he was famous.
“I wanted to really find out just who he was as a person, because we know who he is as kind of this legendary status of being one of the most intelligent, accomplished theorists of our time,” Takechi added. “One of the things I loved discovering about him was right after he left school he was this kind of frustrated, young, unemployed guy who couldn’t find work and had to put his resume out there to everybody — which is very similar to how a lot of us are.”
“Picasso at the Lapin Agile” was the first full-length play written by Martin, a comedic giant whose performances have entertained audiences across the media spectrum since the early 1970s.
