Through Saturday (Feb. 16) only, University of California, San Diego third-year MFA candidate Lori Petermann stages a fascinating production of Friedrich Dãrrenmatt’s “The Physicists.” The work is enhanced by Emily DeAngelis’ costumes, Hong Sooyeon’s lighting and Toby “jaguar” Algya’s sound design.
Prior to curtain a patron asked, “Why are they doing this play in the Mandell Weiss Theatre?”
The answer, of course, is that the size of the Mandell Weiss affords a space in which the director, her artistic collaborators and her huge cast may tell the story. This piece of theater is all about visual storytelling, the eye being gateway to the mind.
It’s a dark, stylized tragicomedy that came out of Americans’ post-World War II fears that science, scientists and the bomb were out of control and would destroy humankind. In this era of nuclear proliferation and terrorism, cloned meat, adulterated produce and spoiled environment, we have the same fears. That makes for powerful, timely storytelling with lots of laughs over Dãrrenmatt’s absurdist, time-out-of-whack approach to important questions.
Especially admirable is Steven C. Kemp’s scenic design ” a two-level asylum in which “real” physicist Johann Wilhelm Möbius (a grand performance by Larry Herron) has contrived to get himself committed. He fears that his various discoveries will lead to humanity’s destruction and hides in the asylum to prevent discovery of the discoveries. He convinces others that he hears and is guided by King Solomon, when in truth he is the sanest person in the institution.
One cellmate in the physicists’ wing believes he is Albert Einstein: very funny, Walter Belenky plays violin convincingly. The third “physicist” (Evan Powell) believes he is Isaac Newton. The three, who have a common room, murder their nurses one by one. Touchingly affecting are the scenes between Herron and his nurse, Monika (Maritxell Carrero), and Herron and Mobiös’ wife (Liz Jenkins), who has now remarried. There are assorted detectives, incompetent stretcher-bearers, the asylum owner and, after all the female nurses are gone, male attendants who have more brawn than brains.
Though acting in consistent stylized manner, the actors never go over the top, a remarkable directorial achievement given the absurd nature of the work.
Three performances remain, 8 p.m. tonight through Saturday, Mandell Weiss Theatre, UCSD Theatre District/La Jolla Playhouse. Tickets at the Mandell Weiss Theatre box office, http://www-theatre.ucsd.edu/ or (858) 534-4574.
