WHERE'S THE BLOODY CAMERA? |
MIT professor Alan Lightman's first novel Einstein's Dreams (1993) doesn't have a plot or developing characters. Instead: 30 chapters of dream worlds ostensibly conjured up by the young Albert Einstein, a patent clerk in Berne, Switzerland in 1905, as he's putting together his theory of relativity. Not exactly the kind of stuff that lends itself to adaptation.In the past when it has been brought to the stage, the work has been amended in a variety of ways. An adaptation developed by the Burning Coal Theatre Company in Raleigh, North Carolina expanded on the character of Michele Besso who appears briefly in scenes with his friend Einstein in the novel. Joshua Rosenblum and Sydney Lessner's musical take on the novel at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan featured a love interest for Einstein.
Director Wesley Savick in collaboration with the Underground Railway Theater and MIT (performances through April 29 at MIT’s Broad Institute Auditorium), opt to stay loyal to the book. The lines are mostly plucked from the pages and no additional characters are inserted. What they do is create two dreamtellers (the relentlessly entertaining Steven Barkhimer and Debra Wise) to set up the different riffs on time and thus provide greater narrative arc.
The performance opens with Einstein (Robert Najarian with a light touch) sleeping in a chair, white panels at his back. Barkhimer and Wise, visible to the audience, begin narrating from behind: "For the past several months, since the middle of April, he has dreamed many dreams about time…Out of many possible natures of time, imagined in as many nights, one seems compelling. Not that the others are impossible. The others might exist in other worlds." Not merely content to read lines — beautiful as they are — from the book, the pair soon take to tiptoeing around the mustached man. Barkhimer in particular is a hoot, reaching for Einstein's pages to have a peek before his hand is slapped away by his fellow dreamteller .
The dreams that follow are wonderfully realized. In one, the world will end for certain on September 26, 1907. With this knowledge, businesses and schools close. "What need is there for commerce and industry with so little time left?" asks a dreamteller. Barkhimer and Wise come out into the audience to bounce lines off of audience members, and later hold hands with audience members as the chapter's gorgeous last lines are recited: "And below, the vast blanket of snow hurtles nearer and nearer to envelop this circle of pinkness and life." And with that, Einstein, perched in front of a panel emanating blue light, becomes a shadow of himself.
Another of Einstein's dreams tells of a world where lovers and parents with children try to preserve moments by traveling to a center where time stands still. For this one, Einstein simultaneously plays the son to Wise's mother and the father to Barkhimer's son. The three stay perfectly still as if posing for a photograph that never gets taken.
In another dream, the population worships a Great Clock "that measured out exactly the moments of life." To simulate the clock's effect on everyday life, the actors recite their lines while doing a stilted “Walk-like-an-Egyptian”-inspired dance routine.
