PRINTTwo guys walk into a bar ...
Picasso and Einstein entertain with brainy banter over brews
MATTHEW CAVANAH
Chris Bowling (left) and Aaron Krawitz (right) listen as Michael Tuley (center) explains how the frame is just as important as the art that goes inside of it.
March 12, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Drunken slurs, raunchy talk and four-letter words tend to fill the conversations overheard in a bar, but usually these conversations aren’t between two highly intelligent, extremely well-known fathers of their field. In the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, written by actor Steve Martin and performed this month by the Columbia Entertainment Company, the audience gets a taste of life and laughter as young Pablo Picasso meets Albert Einstein at a bar in Paris. The play has all the comedic ingredients of any Martin dialogue.
“[Picasso and Einstein] end up hitting it off and having a good conversation about art and science in the dawning century,” says first-time director Rory O’Carroll. This debate between art and science has been around and back again. To artists, equations are just a bunch of numbers, and mathematicians can’t see beyond the canvas. Martin brings this age-old argument to the surface through the interactions of Picasso, Einstein and any other folks who stagger into the bar. In one scene, the two exchange doodles. “Einstein’s is a formula, and Picasso’s is a weird kind of abstract woman, and they don’t get it,” says Kirsten Olson, an actress who plays the bartender’s girlfriend. In this scene, Picasso claims his doodle touches the heart while Einstein only sees lines; Einstein claims his touches the head while Picasso is befuddled by using letters and claiming it’s art.
What: Picasso at the Lapin Agile
When: March 12 – 14, 7:30 p.m., March 15, 2 p.m.
Where: Columbia Entertainment Company, 1800 Nelwood Drive
Cost: $10, $9 students, $8
children and seniors
Call: 474-3699
The play will definitely have Steve Martin’s schtick in there, says Olson, who describes Picasso’s character as being “really kind of a dog.” Set in 1904 at the Lapin Agile bar, this play is really no more than a Seinfeld episode with a whole lot going on about nothing. Arguments are settled with a simple harrumph and a roll of the eyes with characters chalking it up to women just being women and men thinking only with the thing between their legs.
But really, the whole play isn’t going to make the audience blush. “It’s appealing on an intellectual level, and it’s appealing on just a flat out comedy way,” Olson says.
Bits of intellect litter the humorous dialogue. “I think the deeper meaning behind it is the debate between art and science and how those things are going to overshadow any other sort of fields in the 20th century,” O’Carroll says.
Written by the Jerk himself in 1993, Martin’s first play graced Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre for its premiere and has been performed in Los Angeles, New York and Detroit.
“It’s just amazing how you can see the interaction between the younger actors and older actors and how they are kind of bringing each other up,” O’Carroll says of the cast. Chris Bowling, who plays leading Einstein lad, says of his laid-back young character, “The other great thing is I get to do a silly accent.” Alcohol, laughter and silly accents … what more could you possibly ask for?
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