'Picasso at the Lapin Agile' at Boiler Room

You have to hand it to the creative minds at Boiler Room Theatre: year after year they mount seasons filled with ambitious offerings, they attract some of the most talented actors, directors and theatre technicians to be found and, most compellingly, they draw loyal, involved audiences show after show. With comic legend Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile, now onstage at the Franklin theatre through July 25, it's just unfortunate that the playwright doesn't keep up his end of the bargain.

Although pleasantly diverting, Picasso remains a self-indulgent treatise on the 20^th century, imagining as it does a seredipitous meeting of artist Pablo Picasso and scientist Albert Einstein (and one time-traveling later 20^th century American performer) in the eponymous bistro of the title. Certainly, the play, however slight, contains some entertaining one-liners and offers an intriguing premise, but Martin's overlying aims seem rather arch and somehow miss their mark.

There are some very funny moments in the one-act piece, during which some characters break the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience, and some anachronistic touches that are quite provocative and genuinely funny. Director Laura Skaug's deft hand is felt here in the actors' assured delivery, something which transcends the script's weaker moments.

 Perhaps the play's most intriguing element is its date, time and place-it's set in 1904 in a Paris cafe-with the beginning of the 20th century still fresh in the minds of the play's inhabitants and the memory of the 19^th century still, well, fresh in their recollections. Consider how people approached the dawn of the 21^st century, filtered through a lens wrought by excitement, anticipation and fear, and multiply that ten times and you'll have a fairly clear idea of what the dawn of the 20^th century must have been like had you been there.

 The play brings German patent office clerk Albert Einstein, a physicist at heart but not yet the theory of relativity guy, to the Lapin Agile for a chance encounter with Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who's not yet famous but still a known figure in Parisian salons. You have a surefire plan for hilarity, right? The answer is "yes" if you have a really good playwright at the helm, but Martin isn't a really good playwright. He is a very gifted comedian, obviously a cerebral one despite that whole arrow-through-the-head phase, but a gifted playwright he ain't. His absurdist comedy is absurd, certainly; it's comic, too-it just doesn't satisfy as much as one would hope.

The characters are broadly drawn, as one would hope to find in an absurdist comedy, and are slightly more than one-dimensional, which is to the playwright's credit. And his observations about the creative processes-whether artistic or scientific-are certainly provocative, but I left Picasso at the Lapin Agile feeling a vague sense of ennui and a melancholic longing for something more laugh-out-loud funny.

That is not to say, however, that the production is not successful, because it is on many levels. Thanks to the aforementioned direction of Skaug and a superb ensemble cast, the Boiler Room has a excellent production on the boards until July 25. Nate Eppler, as the acerbic brainiac Einstein, confidently takes the stage with a performance that is at once zany and serious (just as I suspect Al himself would be). He's ably countered by Wilhelm Peters, as the oversexed Spaniard Picasso, who gives a very knowing comic performance that skirts caricature and delivers instead a fully-realized portrayal, given the script's parameters.

Kay Ayers-Sowell, as the deceptively intelligent barmaid Germaine (perhaps the most contemporary of the characers in her outlook on life, charged as she is with representing the modern woman), is marvelous in the role, and she is paired onstage with a deliciously droll Lane Wright as her employer and lover (foreshadowing the sexual jungle that is the late 20^th century workplace?). Alan Lee is well-cast as Sagot, a Parisian art dealer, who has some of the best lines of the evening, and Douglas Goodman brings a much-needed jolt of energetic hucksterism to the proceedings as Charles Dabernow Schmendiman, the inventor of a very-brittle building material comprised primarily of asbestos and radium. Jennifer Richmond, playing a bevy of female roles, is quite good in her chameleon-like performance and Pat Reilly, though underserved by his scantily-written character, makes the most of his time onstage.

Finally, kudos to Mike Baum, as a time-traveling interloper from the late 20^th Century, who gives an affectionate, if somewhat predictable, salute to the American Century (as the 20^th is aptly remembered the world 'round), who arrives on the scene to tie up the loose ends of Martin's script and deliver its mixed message about creativity, celebrity and progress-just in case you didn't figure it out for yourself. (Thanks, Steve, I had no idea what you'd been driving at for the previous hour and a half. Next time, hit me over the head a little bit harder, won't you?)

Picasso at the Lapine Agile continues at Boiler Room Theatre, at The Factory in Franklin, though July 25^th. For tickets, visit www.BoilerRoomTheatre.com or call (615) 794-7744.

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