Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
By Steve Martin
Directed by Ashland Thomas
Starring Kevin Sigman, Adam Shorts-Boarman, Scott Mills, Ashley Evelyn Hoven
G.O.A.T., Winter Park FL</strong>
Its unlikely Einstein (Shorts-Boarman) and Picasso (Sigman) ever met in a Parisian dive bar, but it’s a great conceit to explore the parallels between science and art. On a typical evening in 1904 Montmartre, Einstein wanders in expecting his date to meet him at a different watering hole. Working class bartender Freddy (Mills) and his more thoughtful wife Germaine (Hoven) flirt and banter while Einstein fills his note book and Picasso’s groupies wander in and out. When the great artiste arrives, he and Einstein challenge each other, but after a few grunts and chest butts they observe they are brothers in intellectual exploration. Each is out to change the world, but its clear Picasso will get more chicks.
Author Martin cheerfully bends facts to make his surrealist points in this quirky, 4th wall breaking comedy. The players are well drawn, even if his portrayal of Einstein puts him into philosophical positions he despised in real life. Shorts-Boarman worked as well as he could with the text, giving his Einstein a charming naivety, almost as if he were Charlie Brown with a good grasp of tensor calculus. Picasso’s art dealer Sagot (E. J. Younes) gave a great if flamboyant portrayal of a man who had an eye for talent and no qualms about exploiting it. Mill’s Freddy was as earnest as Hoven was flirty, but the commercial genius Schmendiman (Joshua Roth) came across as a bit smarmy. Sigman’s Picasso had the right mix of cockiness and confidence, and his groupie Suzanne (Brooke Elise Sullivan) seemed just the sort of girl a guy like Picasso would chew up and spit out.
As we rolled through vector fields of surrealism and wobbly philosophy, the final element of weirdness arrives in the form of a time traveling Elvis played by Joe Glass. Perhaps he represents fame transcending time, or the uniting of science and art via music, but he might just represent a goofy cultural reference to the wave of Elvis sightings about the time this play was put on paper.
While we meet interesting people and get more than few laughs, this play leaves one wondering what Martin intended. His philosophical musings lack a unity or direction to take us to places we’ve not been. Einstein in particular felt very inauthentic, in life he was never a wiz at raw arithmetic and despised the uncertainty principle, and what really drove him to create the Special Theory of Relativity is never mentioned. Picasso’s intellectual challenge that gave the world cubism and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is equal unexplained. Occasionally the 4th wall breaks, but only briefly and to no specific end. There’s good acting and good direction here, but don’t rely on this to get you out of studying for that physics exam or Art history 101.
For more information on Greater Orlando Actor’s Theatre, please visit http://www.goatgroup.com/
