Who knew that Albert Einstein could be a romantic leading man? “Why isn’t love as easy as physics?” the protagonist wonders in the new musical Einstein’s Dreams. And by the time this 95-minute, one-act piece has run its course, even more science-challenged audience members may agree he has a point.
Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Alan Lightman, Dreams envisions the historical figure whose name is synonymous with genius as a young man, earning his wages as a clerk in a Swiss patent office (as Einstein did) while pursuing a beautiful woman who appears to him only in dreams. Josette, as she is called, will become Albert’s muse by pushing him to explore the unknown. “If only I understood time and space better, I could be with her,” he tells a skeptical friend and colleague.
In reality, it has been documented, Einstein’s turbulent personal life included two wives (the second a cousin) and extramarital entanglements. The portrait that emerges here is a relatively (pardon the pun) wholesome one, that of a man frustrated in his marriage and job who fantasizes—unconsciously, for the most part—of stimulating interaction, intellectual and otherwise, that ends up helping him change the course of history.
If it sounds like a tall order to recreate that onstage, collaborating lyricists Joanne Sydney Lessner and Joshua Rosenblum, who respectively wrote Dreams‘s book and music, and director Cara Reichel have recruited a design team that mixes elegance with whimsy, handily transporting us from Einstein’s desk into fanciful dream sequences and back. Isabel Mengyuan Le’s set features a large clock that looms over the stage, reflecting vivid patterns and moving images as Herrick Goldman’s lighting splashes color and forms shadows as the actors address each other and metaphysical matters.
The dialogue and songs themselves are more of a mixed bag. Titles such as “The Relativity Rag” and “Now Backwards Moving is Time” (read in reverse for a better idea) suggest a labored quality and occasional cuteness. In “The Red Hat,” Albert—played by the charming Zal Owen as a most crush-worthy nerd—finds himself in three different scenarios at once; in “I Want to Love You,” he walks into a dream within a dream within a dream, etc., with Alexandra Silber’s glamorous, sharp-witted Josette. They sing: “The room in which we’re standing/ Is multiplied and then/ We feel our thoughts reverberate… Time is like light, reflecting off a mirror/ Producing an infinite number of images…” Are you writing all this down?
The better numbers, orchestrated by Rosenblum and Tim Peierls with nods to klezmer and Kurt Weill, appeal more simply and directly to our emotions. “I Will Never Let You Go” is especially lovely, confronting the tension between our attachment to children and lovers and the need to let them flourish independently; Tess Primack, cast as both Albert’s wife and his officemate sings it beautifully in the latter role, as a mom, and it’s movingly reprised later, in a very different context.
Other standouts in the score, and the company, include the unabashedly sentimental “I Never Told Him I Love Him,” robustly sung by Michael McCoy and Brennan Caldwell—as Albert’s stuffy boss and faithful buddy, respectively—and the spooky, alluring “Signposts of Time,” delivered by the piquant-voiced Stacia Fernandez, as the boss’s sturdy, patient secretary. “Think hard before you wish your life away,” she warns Albert.
It should be no spoiler that Albert takes her advice, though like most of us, he doesn’t emerge without having regrets—one biggie in particular, after a scene that flashes forward to the World War II era. But you needn’t be an avid student of history, or physics, to enjoy this ambitious, imperfect work.
Einstein’s Dreams opened November 20, 2019, at 59E59 and runs through December 14. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
