February 11, 2012
Review: Scientific AmericansSideMart masters the science of comedy
By Pat Donnelly, GAZETTE THEATRE CRITIC February 10, 2012 6:06 PM
MONTREAL - Playwright John Mighton exists in a league of his own. This first became evident in 1988 when his Scientific Americans surfaced at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto.
It’s a play overflowing with ideas about the ethics of science, the appeal of math and physics, the function of art and the complexities of human relationships. It asks questions about where ideas come from and whether all knowledge is beneficial, even if it can be used to cause harm.
Specifically, if you supply someone who is building a stealth missile with “a couple of equations,” what’s your moral responsibility toward its human targets?
Mighton often seems too intelligent for the theatre. But he does know how to make us laugh. And in the hands of director Andrew Shaver and SideMart Theatrical Grocery at the Segal Centre, the comedic potential of Scientific Americans is maximized, its ideas elucidated. A play that once must have seemed futuristic now rings prophetic.
Following a greeting from an unseen robotic voice, the subversively charming Graham Cuthbertson gets things off to an invigorating start. As an army-employed psychologist, with a background in television, he sets the conference framework of the play, and its ironically analytical tone. A clever segue about AT&T leads us into a tragicomic phone conversation between a bitterly disillusioned mother and her estranged, overachieving scientist son.
Jim (Trent Pardy), who works in the field of electromagnetic radiation, tries to tell his mother (Susan Bain, priceless in the first of her multiple roles) that he’s landed a job and is in love, with another scientist. Her name is Carol (Julia Course) and her specialty is artificial intelligence. But mom has withdrawn into the soaps, indifferent to her son.
By the end of Scientific Americans, any notion of scientists being sane people who are raised in happy homes is shattered. At the U.S. Department of Defence headquarters in New Mexico, Mighton sets up an asylum-like atmosphere around Jim, with General Berger (Michael Blake) as benevolent dictator and fellow scientist Crutchfield (Daniel Brochu) as but one of many gifted neurotics employed there.
“The freedom. That’s what keeps people here,” insists Berger. “And the exchange. The most exciting physics in the world is being done within these walls.”
The anti-war protesters who hound Jim beg to differ. And Carol’s perspective is closer to theirs than that of the army. As Jim becomes immersed in his work, she withdraws, not acknowledging the destructive potential of her own field. If the dynamics of their relationship don’t always ring true, that’s as much a factor of some contrived scenes and Carol’s underwritten character as Course’s cool, uneven performance. The play is set up so that Jim wins more and more sympathy as things fall apart.
Pardy is on target, but it’s Cuthbertson and Bain whom we can’t get enough of, with Brochu delivering his share of hilarious moments and Blake struggling to exude menace. The teamwork in the play’s most challenging scene, a farcical interlude involving a tray of cookies, is impressive.
James Lavoie’s immense Star Trek-in-a-desert-bunker set, with tracks to move furniture and a slim horizontal window for projections, adds a fitting visual dimension. Evocative lighting (by Sarah Yaffe), soundscape (Jesse Ash), video art (George Allister and Patrick Andrew Boivin) and understated costumes (Lavoie) all fit the equation.
There’s a lot to be absorbed during the 85 minutes (no intermission) of Scientific Americans. Which makes it worth seeing twice.
Scientific Americans, by John Mighton, continues at the Segal Centre, 5170 Côte Ste. Catherine Rd., until Feb. 26. $22 to $44. 514-739-7944; www.segalcentre.org
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