Subtraction by Subtraction
Maybe it began a few years earlier, but I noticed the decline of Western civilization when Julie Harris, playing Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst, smilingly read her cake recipe. Where was the ferocious intelligence of America's greatest poet? Gone. After all, an audience might be put off by the woman who could write, "I like a look of agony/ Because I know it's true." But they would certainly embrace Massachusetts' original Betty Crocker.
Since then, a procession of plays (well, often they're merely elongated solos, tailored to celebrity actors) has depicted some of history's great achievers as amiable kooks, whose brilliance is just another eccentricity.
THE NEW MATH? QED, starring Peter DeLaurier and Amanda Schoonover, is more about fun than physics.
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That's how it seems in Peter Parnell's QED, about Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. (QED here stands for quantum electrodynamics, rather than quod erat demonstrandum, the traditional sign-off for mathematical proofs.) The subject is a catch-22 for Parnell — there's interest in Feynman because of his stature as a scientist; but since his science is staggeringly complicated, the play better do something to make Feynman accessible.
So what we get in QED is a Feynman who lectures the audience by squeezing in a little Physics for Dummies among more entertaining activities — playing the bongos, appearing in a student production of South Pacific, translating a letter written in Tuvan, seducing women. It's a complicated life, and Feynman can hardly keep track. He's got to call somebody to figure out what day it is.
In other words, this Feynman is a dramatist's cliche: the Nutty Professor, the Absent-Minded Professor, Mr. Chips and Cary Grant, all in one. The show's intellectual rigor is provided by some brief and rudimentary musings on the Challenger explosion and the atom bomb. Pathos is lent by the looming shadow of death (Feynman has cancer and additional complications).
QED is a well-oiled machine, and Peter DeLaurier (Feynman) is accomplished and charming. The talented Amanda Schoonover sparkles as a flirtatious student (and her too-brief appearances allow QED to escape, narrowly, becoming a monologue). The design is tasteful, the direction competent and unobtrusive. The two hours pass pleasantly enough. Ultimately, though, QED is a piece that takes the low road. What you will learn about physics and Feynman is forgettable. But the lessons in crafty commercial playwriting could last a lifetime.
QED
Through Dec. 3, Lantern Theater Co. at St. Stephen's Theater, 10th and Ludlow sts., 215-829-9002, www.lanterntheater.org
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