One of the too many reasons today’s world is so troubled involves the wide-spread dismissive attitude towards science. The scoffing at climate change that prevails so widely in the face of gathering evidence to the opposite is only one in-your-face example. Indeed, how many plays are there out there devoted to science? There is the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation series as well as Michael Frayn’s acclaimed Copenhagen. (Both Frayn and Copenhagen are mentioned in the script.)
Now, there’s Carole Buggé’s so-so Strings Attached, into which Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is dropped as well as the names Copernicus, Galileo, Hawking, Einstein, Bohr, Shrödinger and his theoretical cat, Newton, Curie and Planck – the last three showing up in person (or as, respectively the actors Jonathan Hadley, Bonnie Black, Russell Saylor). And always remember: Nothing could be dropped were we not all ruled by gravity, so well articulated in Newton’s writings.
But the main Strings Attached action follows three physicists: June (Robynne Parrish), Rory (Brian Richardson) and George (Paul Schoeffler) as they board and ride a train from Cambridge to London’s Euston Station, after Rory and George have delivered lectures at a conference. Pertinently, Rory and George are adherents of rival beliefs on the origin and make-up of the enlarging universe. Rory espouses the M-Theory, while George holds to the String Theory, which prompts Buggé’s playful title.
(N.B.: This review is not the place to look for more thorough definitions of the theories under discussion.)
Though Rory and George, while complimenting each other on the presentations, debate their opposing contentions, that’s not their primary motivation. Love and its concomitant emotion jealousy are the real subject matter — or perhaps the theory of the relativity of love.
In the shortish first act, June is married to George but philandering with Rory, a slipping-around of which George is all too aware, as the three mostly sit on comfy cabin seats designed by Jessica Parks at a 90-degree angle.
Their disagreements build to a peak when June explains to George that he’s an unexciting lover between the sheets. She declares that Rory has more of the animal about him. There is also talk about June’s and George’s having lost son David during a previous train accident, a sorrow that always has her nervous about trains and less at ease with George.
Not so incidentally, Newton shows up interrupt the three frenemies with a pointer or two. Other interlopers are a Ukrainian man (Saylor) and a Ukrainian woman (Black), who provide no discernible dramatic or comic purpose. Director Alexa Kelly has these unexpected guests signaling June, Rory and George to rise and sit on successive dialogue cues. Why? Who knows?
In the even shorter second act, June is married to Rory but fooling around with George, but Buggé, having put the spin on the pairings, doesn’t find much more velocity. She and director Kelly do try by sending out Curie and Planck with suggestions that seem to have something to do with their scientific discoveries and personal problems.
Additional second-act events lead to an American couple (Black and Saylor again, in gaudy outfits from costumer Elena Vannoni) crashing the cabin with a few unfunny things to say. Kelly can’t help them along significantly, either.
At one tense moment, June lashes out at the threesome’s conversations as having become “tedious.” She’s not wrong. Tedium begins to loom over the proceedings like quantums on the rampage. Late in the first act, June, Rory and George decide the best efforts they can make in regard to each other is to “keep dancing.” They do just that by standing in a line downstage and for a minute or three twisting into awkward positions and declaring what they want from life.
From time to time, the characters tell jokes about how many physicists it takes to screw in a lightbulb, which perhaps is intended as an insight into the kind of humor common to physicists. Nevertheless, the running gags quickly cease to be amusing – even when Newton and screwing in a 17th-century light bulb is brought up. (Is the answer kinda predictable?)
Throughout, Buggé also includes many literary references, not the least of them from T. S. (“The Wasteland”) Eliot. The upshot serves less as depicting the characters as literate than it does to suggest the playwright is showing off. Though the notion of parallel universes and the Big Bang Theory are occasionally invoked, the play’s bang is markedly less big.
There is one outstanding Strings Attached element: the setting in a moving train. Buggé is slyly alluding to Einstein’s daunting theory of relativity. To explain it to members of the public having difficulty grasping the concept, the most famous physicist of them all regularly used the image of trains moving. How truly smart of Buggé to honor Einstein in this manner!
Strings Attached opened September 8, 2022, at Theatre Row and runs through October 1. Tickets and information: bfany.org
