Theatre Preview
PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE
Produced by Mob Hit Productions
Starring Geoff Woods, Scott Roberts and Matt Woodward
Directed by Amy Lippold
December 4 to 14
Pumphouse Theatres
Have you ever known a genius? Did you ever want to spend some time with one?
Mob Hit Productions is offering the opportunity to share an evening with two of the greatest minds of the 20th century in their upcoming production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Set in Paris in 1904, this comic fantasy revolves around the not-yet-famous Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein.
"It plays with the stigma of being a genius…. And it goes against the stereotypes," explains director Amy Lippold. "It takes Picasso, who was a genius in art, and Einstein, who was a genius in science, and you see so many similarities between them in the show. People think of art and science as completely separate, but this shows that Picasso and Einstein are virtually brothers because they share this exact, creative process."
Both men were unknown twentysomethings in 1904. Picasso was three years away from revolutionizing the art world with his painting Les Demoiselles D’Avignon. Einstein was only one year away from the publication of The Special Theory of Relativity. In an intriguing scenario, playwright Steve Martin imagines what might have happened if Einstein, who was living in Zurich at the time, happened to wander into the same bar as Picasso.
The result is a humanizing glimpse into the personalities of these great men and their particular genius. Coming from the pen of original wild-and-crazy guy Martin, the play delivers plenty of comedy along with a generous helping of great ideas.
Although we remember them as intellectuals, in the play both Picasso and Einstein are outgoing, life-of-the-party types – characterizations supported by the real lives of both men.
"Picasso went on to be married many times and there were stories about Einstein being a skirt chaser – it was an important part of Einstein," says Scott Roberts, who plays the famous scientist. "Everyone was always asking Einstein to explain relativity. He said, ‘When you spend an hour with an ugly girl, a minute feels like an hour. When you spend an hour with a beautiful girl, it feels like a minute. That’s relativity.’"
For Geoff Woods, who plays Picasso, the play does a great job of making it easy to understand art and science.
"It’s extremely accessible," he says. "Steve Martin has the ability to communicate complex ideas simply – so simply that they become funny."
The play begins in a realistic vein as we watch the interaction among patrons of Picasso’s haunt, the Paris bistro Lapin Agile, but much of the comedy – and part of the point of Picasso at the Lapin Agile – comes from moments when traditional conventions are shattered.
"At some points, it goes out of its way to show you that it’s not (realistic)," says Roberts. "People constantly break the fourth wall and talk right to the audience. People are time-travelling and showing up from the future. One character has to go back offstage and re-enter because they complain that he came on at the wrong place in the script."
For the play, seating in the Joyce Doolittle Theatre will be arranged cabaret-style, giving the audience the feeling that they are patrons at the Lapin Agile sharing the action with the other "non-genius characters."
"It really shows what happens to ordinary people when they come into contact with an extraordinary idea," says Woods. "Whether we’re talking about space and time being curved or cubism in the fourth dimension, the fact of the matter is extraordinary ideas are just as at home in an ordinary person’s head as anybody else’s." |
