Einstein’s Dreams is a lovely meditation on the nature of time, presented as theater, mime and dance.
In the current Jobsite Theater production of Alan Lightman’s work (adapted from prose fiction by David Gardiner and Ralf Remshardt), five female and four male actors dressed in white enact time turning in circles, freezing, becoming “sticky,” becoming visible, coming to an end and running backwards. As each new possibility is announced to us, the nine actors display, in a beautifully impressionistic manner, a world where people reside on mountains (because time moves more slowly at great heights, and everyone wants to live as long as possible), or make a pilgrimage to Rome (to worship the Great Clock), or enact the same event in three different ways (because time splits into several alternatives at every moment).
On a bare floor painted with seven wheels of varying sizes, the actors dance, construct tableaux, dangle slips of fabric on poles to represent birds, or mime playing a violin while real violin music plays in the background. Even the most bizarre possibilities are treated with quiet lyricism, and the final effect is soothing, almost hypnotic, and often gently amusing. It’s modern physics as imagined by Chopin, or Henry Moore, or Alexander Calder. It’s a pleasure to witness.
This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2010.