June (Robyne Parrish), Rory (Brian Richardson), and George (Paul Schoeffler) are on their way to the theater in Strings Attached (photo © John Quilty 2022)
STRINGS ATTACHED
Pulse Theatre at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through October 1, $57.50
pulseensembletheatre.org
bfany.org
I decided to take no chances when going to Carole Buggé’s Strings Attached at Theatre Row; I brought along a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool nuclear physicist. You don’t have to bring your own nuclear physicist in order to enjoy the play, but it certainly helped as he confirmed that the various mathematical equations we saw projected onto the closed curtain before the show were correct, and he also explained that an abstract dance at the end of the first act was most likely the performers moving like protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Buggé’s reworking of an earlier play takes place in a large train berth as three scientists travel from a convention to London to see Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, a Tony-winning, well-researched, but imagined account of the real-life meeting between physicists Neil Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941. In that play, Frayn imagines Bohr and Heisenberg’s discussion of nuclear power, the atomic bomb, the latter’s uncertainty principle, and the responsibilities of the scientific community to the future of humankind.
Buggé’s play, produced by Pulse Ensemble Theatre, is also inspired by an actual event, about three physicists debating the Big Bang while on a train heading to a string theory conference in Cambridge. The lithe rock climber June (Robyne Parrish) and the stoical, upper-class George (Paul Schoeffler) are married cosmologists who recently lost a child in a train accident. They are joined by their friend Rory (Brian Richardson), a prickly, hard-edged particle physicist who has a thing for June. While George is a string theorist, Rory advocates for M theory, leading to lofty jokes and rejoinders.
“Ten dimensions of space but only one of time,” George says when he almost misses the train. “How many physicists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” Rory asks. “I don’t know,” June responds. “It depends,” Rory adds. “On what?” George asks. “On whether the light is a particle or a wave,” Rory explains. My companion chuckled at what turned out to be the first of several screw-in lightbulb jokes.
Sir Isaac Newton (Jonathan Hadley) waxes poetic to cosmologist George (Paul Schoeffler) in Carole Buggé’s reimagined play (photo © John Quilty 2022)
The trio is occasionally visited by two strange fan-geek couples (Bonnie Black and Russell Saylor), who turn out to know a surprising amount of science, as well as by George’s, June’s, and Rory’s respective heroes: Sir Isaac Newton (Jonathan Hadley), Marie Curie (Black), and Max Planck (Saylor), who have been keeping up-to-date on what is happening in the world long after their deaths. Topics of discussion range from William Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Albert Einstein, Galileo, and William Blake to Schrodinger’s cat, quantum physics, membrane theory, Planck’s constant, and the singularity. The second act explores the concept of alternate parallel universes, with many clever nuances.
At one point, talking about Frayn’s play, Rory tells George, “A bit dodgy, writing about a real event. Seems you’re setting yourself up for failure.” Here Buggé is also referring to herself, but she manages to pull it off, for the most part. Director and Pulse cofounder Alexa Kelly (W. E. B. Du Bois: A Man for All Times, Harlem Summer Shakespeare) maintains order amid the potential chaos, like a train conductor staying on track and on schedule. Buggé and Kelly do a good job incorporating ideas of love, loss, fear, and faith while not getting lost in all the science, making sure to go relatively easy on the technical language, which is helpful even if you’re sitting next to a nuclear physicist — who had seen Copenhagen on Broadway in 2000.
Jessica Parks’s set is an open, tearaway train car that looks like it’s been in a crash itself. Joyce Liao’s lighting and Louis Lopardi’s sound make it feel like the characters are on a moving train. Katerina Vitaly’s projections add to the science. Schoeffler (Sunset Boulevard, Rock of Ages) has a soothing quality as the serene George, while Parrish (A Man Called Otto, Gossip Girl) is thoroughly charming as June; it’s obvious why both George and Rory are in love with her.
Richardson (W. E. B. Du Bois: A Man for All Times, The Lower Depths) is too one-note as Rory, overly severe, while Black (Citizen Wong, Margarethe Bohr in Riverside Theatre’s Copenhagen) and Saylor (Screams of Kitty Genovese, Starlight Express) overplay the two couples, who are overwritten with too much slapsticky humor and seem out of place on the train and in the play itself. Hadley (Jersey Boys, Caesar and Cleopatra) is wonderfully flamboyant as Newton and sweetly endearing as the Irish train conductor.
Describing her love of rock climbing, June tells George and Rory, “It forces you to be in the moment. Time doesn’t exist — there’s only now.” The same can be said about theater — particularly at Theatre Row, where multiple shows are going on at the same time, each creating its own universe.