BWW Preview: HEISENBERG at Rubicon Theatre Company

Stephen Simon's recent play, Heisenberg, opens this week at the Rubicon Theatre. Two strangers meet at a London train station where an unlikely romantic relationship develops between them. Joe Spano plays Alex, an Irish butcher, set in his ways. A complete stranger, Georgie (Faline England), kisses him. Subsequently, Georgie comes careening straight at him like an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. What collision or connection will come next?

The playwright leaves Werner Heisenberg's theory of uncertainty in physics (that the location and velocity of two particles cannot both be measured at the same time) as a metaphor open to the audience's interpretation. I asked the actor, Joe Spano, how the theory of indeterminacy was operating in the play. He observed that if that theory explains the behavior of particles, it also holds true about "all of the universe and relationships as well. How do we know other people; how do we know ourselves?" Given this fundamental uncertainty, Joe Spano added, "What do we do with that? How do we find connection? How do we deal with the trauma that we've all, every single one of us, experienced?" "Even when we share an experience with another," Spano continued, "our memories of it differ." Alex says in the play "We hold very different perspectives on experiences we imagine we're sharing."

Faline England remarked on how the play explores a particularly modern experience of social isolation. At a time when too often skimming social media accounts displaces genuine connection, this play dramatizes the urgency of authentic engagement: "It's a love story about seeing connection in a disconnected and uncertain time. How do we come together not only despite differences but because of them?" The playwright created characters who are seemingly incompatible. Their differences may be the spark of attraction. As Spano says, "They have different gifts to give to each other. They may be exactly what the other needs; we don't know."

Both actors underscored the remarkable energy and velocity of the story. England remarked that preparing the role of Georgie felt uniquely dangerous and novel because of this. Being inside the play, she said, everything seemed like a magnified experience of reality, "hyper, hyper love; the very dark [kind] and the very light [kind]." England credited the director, Katherine Farmer, with supporting her as she made bold and risky choices with the character of Georgie. Spano also thought that Farmer's style offered them both suggestions on extending and shaping the choices that they were making. He compared her directing to painting, that she blends the acting choices "like color and line that become sharp lines when you need sharp lines and soft shapes when you need soft shapes."

This style of direction sounds promising in putting a production by Stephen Simon who adapted the novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time, into a sensorily rich, expressionistic piece. From what I've seen of the set design for Heisenberg, it reminds me of an archetypal London train station where so many poignant stories of love, connection, and separation have been told. I'm curious to see what direction this one goes.

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