Picasso at the Lapin Agile

                 Director      Randal Myler
               Set Design      Bill Curley
           Costume Design      G. W. Mercier  
             Light Design      Delbert Unruh 
             Sound Design      Tom Mardikes  
                 Composer      Greg Mackender
       Technical Director      Chuck Hayes       
            Stage Manager      J. F. Mitchel  

                          Cast
                (in order of appearance)
                   Freddy     Anthony DeFonte
                   Gaston     James Lawless
                 Germaine     Leslie O'Carroll
          Albert Einstein     Mark Robbins
 Suzanne & the Countess & 
         a female admirer     Patricia Dalen
                    Sagot     Gary Neal Johnson
            Pablo Picasso     James Newcomb
              Schmendiman     Mark McCarthy
                A visitor     Charlie Kevin

       Production Manager     Ron Schaeffer
  Assistant Stage Manager     Jan Kohl
Assistant to the Director     Adam Houghton

A farce is play of oddly energetic characters caught up in a fast moving sequence of improbable situations. In this sense, Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile is a farce–but with this difference: the fast moving sequence is one of ideas. In a turn of the century French café, twenty-three year old Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein, who were never together in real life, meet for a crazy, off-the-cuff conversation, improvising playfully on subjects as diverse as art, science, genius, creativity, and sex.

Prodded on by an intriguing cast of bar characters, they trade verbal riffs on their own creative process and delightfully anticipate some of their own world-changing accomplishments. A significant part of the audience's pleasure in watching the play derives from interpreting the geniuses' remarks in the light of events that occurred much later. As onlookers, we collaborate with Einstein and Picasso in knowing much more than the other characters know. When Einstein first arrives at the Lapin Agile, Germaine the waitress asks him what he writes about:

Einstein: I...I...I can't even begin to explain
Germaine: Try. Simplify it. Can you say what it's about in one sentence?
Einstein: It's about everything!

This is a good joke–so long as we know enough about Einstein to get it. One thing's for certain: we're in a much better position to get it than Germaine.

We are carried along in the rough and tumble of this play at a breakneck pace, sometimes laughing at things we clearly understand, at other times laughing at things we recognize only at some subliminal level. The whole thing's a game, a heady romp, one we enjoy mostly for the sheer fun of hearing outrageous ideas bump randomly against one another. Critic Jack Kroll catches the spirit of the play:

Picasso and Einstein are on the verge of their revolutions–the creation of cubism and the publication of The Special Theory of Relativity... They hurl drawings and equations at each other like intellectual custard pies. The seedy bar becomes a crazy crucible of modernism with its sexy groupies, venal art dealers, false prophets, and , in an inspired touch, a climactic visit by an unnamed visitor from the future.

Martin's work has been compared in style to that of English playwright, Tom Stoppard, whose acclaimed Travesties imagines an encounter between Lenin, James Joyce, and Tristan Tzara–all of whom were living in Zurich in 1918. While Stoppard's play is a stylish comedy written somewhat in the manner of Oscar Wilde, Martin's is more like an extended sketch, a bag full of verbal tricks, gags, corny jokes and impossible twists, with an occasional serious idea thrown out for brief consideration. One of the serious thoughts underlying the whole play, in fact, is the idea that in 20th Century America celebrity–like that of a certain pop singer from Memphis–is higher than accomplishment.

There may be one other serious idea underlying the play. Randal Myler puts it like this:

"Perhaps in the end, on New Year's Eve of the new century we may all be standing contemplating the stars..."Where are we headed?/ The heavens are dark/ The century is gone/ Everything we live by is destined to go smash."

Picasso at the Lapin Agile gently suggests that: Things are going to be all right. And it does so with the elegant wit and originality that Martin infuses into his protagonists, whose own real-life exploits are some of the hallmarks of our 20th century."