THEATER

Picasso at the Lapin AgileWritten by Steve Martin Directed by David Wheeler At the Hasty Pudding Theatre through June 5

Remember back in junior high when your teacher gave you alternatives to writing academic exercises and instead let you format papers in fictional dialogues between famous people? Imagine what Cicero would have said to Karl Marx if they ever met on the street. Write a conversation between Dante and Magellan about sailing around the wold or under it, and so on. So along comes Steve Martin who went to school before teachers were this nice, and he decides to write a fictional meeting between two of the 20th century's most formative figures, Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein, not knowing that the entire premise would be his best joke for young audiences.

Martin never needed to try anything like this before; he was always funny enough that people would go see his movies regardless of subject matter. Granted, much of his humor has gone out of style, but Martin himself has not been entirely lost to the superstar graveyard. Not so long ago his smash hit, "Roxanne," charmed audiences around the world, so what has changed now to make him want to dabble in period pieces?

Instead of letting himself be remembered for his great comedy, Martin has taken on the tough project of writing a quasi-compendious retrospective of scientific and artistic thought since 1904. In Martin's debut as a playwright, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Albert Einstein (played by Thomas Derrah) shows up at the famous Montmartre bohemian artists' hang-out the Lapin Agile. While working out theorems and waiting for his date to show up, Einstein meets Picasso (Bill Camp) who stumbles in hoping to be noticed and admired. At first distant and confrontational, the two great minds turn their sparring into harmonizing when they discover similarities in art and science, and turn to predicting their impact on the modern world.

WithLapin Agile,Martin tries to prove he has range, but his greatest strengths are still his quixotic jokes and ironic turns on everyday life. History of 20th century thought, needless to say, is not Martin's strongest suit. His insights, though cogent and integrated into casual dialogue with obvious mastery of craft, come out of so many textbook summaries and sound too regurgitated to be more creative than didactic. Original characters have always been his fort, and here, again, they are at once brilliant and painfully funny. Will LeBow as the art dealer, Sagot (both real and reputedly a patron of the Lapin Agile), pompous, self-important and fake when it comes to anything but buying and selling, lights up the stage with every appearance. Leslie Beatty as Germaine, the waitress, is sassy and direct and knows how to handle piggish men such as Picasso.

Meanwhile, Martin's unoriginal characters are just that, unoriginal, and worse, they are the leads. Einstein is fabulously entertaining--and charming--as the Frasier Crane of physics, always having to put up with inferior intellects, but even modernizing Einstein cannot shake him from his stereotypes. Picasso could not be more repulsive, but we already knew that anyway. His legendary misogyny is not lost on Martin or his scrip;, unfortunately there was on way to make it funny either. I kept wondering why Picasso gets his name in the title rather than Einstein. Not only is he the biggest drag on the ticket, he did not even have the most stage time. it's Einstein who is the real hero and mouthpiece of the play. Einstein's voice rings the clearest and strongest throughout, while Picasso remains boorish and dull. But who would go see Einstein at the Lapin Agile? In addition, Martin would be much better off losing his dumb seventies throw-back sex jokes, rather than trying to put a twist on the average, middle-school fiction writing project.

Which brings me to the strange but out standing feature of this otherwise funny piece. Martin has plenty of personal agendas in this play that appear suddenly and without grace, bringing the action to a grinding halt. The most obvious example features Einstein announcing that women (apparently as political entity) have on place in science. Germaine, the waitress, takes Einstein's comment as potentially sexist, whereupon Einstein proclaims loudly and victoriously that science has nothing to do with gender issues. Fair enough, but the study of it certainly does, and it was towards this theme that the exchange had progressed, not Einstein's contortion; it is not without reason that there has been no female Einstein to date. Also perplexing is the exploration of Picasso's despicable character at surprising depth as if it were more important than his art, while Einstein's ideas, as opposed to his person, are given full stage.

More imaginitive elements such as subverting the illusion of theater are worth a few laughs, and in all,Lapin Agileplays with ease, style and great fun, if only for want of some structural progression. Einstein's idea parade meanders and circles with on real way of ending plausibly, so later in the piece, a dark-eyed dream boy from the future shows up in blue suede shoes as a prophet of change. No point to that, either, other than to see where the future is heading, I suppose, and to conclude that meaningful dialogue between the arts and sciences is possible. But if you have heard this theory befoe, please let the rest of the class answer first.