EVERYTHING IS SUPER GREAT by Stephen Brown Debuts at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Xavier Rooney, Lisa Jill Anderson, Will Sarratt, and Marcia Debonis in EVERYTHING IS SUPER GREAT.  Photo by Hunter Canning.

Dysfunctional families, abandonment, disappearances, dementia, failures to communicate, inter-generational conflict – these are among the most basic themes traditionally addressed on stage.  Seldom, however, are they explored as deftly and in such light-hearted fashion as they are by Stephen Brown in Everything Is Super Great, his first full length play to be staged in New York.  And it is why this play, produced by New Light Theater Company and Stable Cable Lab Co. and directed by Sarah Norris at 59E59 Theaters in midtown Manhattan, engenders so many more laughs than tears from the audience.

Tommy (Will Sarratt) is an awkward 19-year old whose father abandoned his family years ago and whose older brother has been missing for months.  He is highly accomplished when it comes to computers but much less so when it comes to relating to others in real life – and he has serious anger management problems.  Having been fired from his job at Applebee’s for setting fire to the restaurant after getting into a row with a customer, he is currently.employed in an entry-level job as a barista at Starbucks and is living at home with his very well-meaning but smothering mother, Anne (Marcia Debonis).

Moreover, losing his job at Applebee’s was the least of Tommy’s problems: as a result of his setting the fire, he was charged with arson, a felony.  His mother did succeed in getting the charge reduced to a misdemeanor, but only on the condition that Tommy undergo therapy to learn how to deal with his anger management problems.  (Which really is a bit ironic since Anne apparently has anger management problems herself, subsequently getting into a fight with a customer at Walmart which gets her fired from her job there too.)

Anyway, Tommy is more than willing to undergo therapy - if he can do it through a course over the internet – but his mother has other ideas.  She insists that he enter into therapy with Dave (Xavier Rooney), a one-time co-worker of hers at Walmart who is now a wannabe therapist who believes that his MFA degree will enable him to treat Tommy effectively through art therapy.  But Dave, as it turns out, has abandonment and anger management problems of his own.  His girlfriend, Rachel, has walked out on him, taking all her stuff (and some of his), leaving no forwarding address and no explanation.

And just to add to the play’s overarching themes of dysfunctionality, disappearances, and abandonment, it turns out that Tommy’s immediate supervisor at Starbucks is Alice (Lisa Jill Anderson), an attractive 21-year old pot-smoking former schoolmate of Tommy’s (although she doesn’t remember him at all) who lives with her grandmother and is her sole care-giver.  And, wouldn’t you know it, grandma suffers from dementia, wanders off one day, and disappears as well.

So there you have it: Anne’s husband and Tommy’s father is gone, Anne’s oldest son and Tommy’s brother is gone, Dave’s girlfriend is gone, Alice’s grandmother is gone, and all that remains is for this dysfunctional group to sort it all out as best they can in the most cheerful, comedic manner one might imagine.

And they prove to be fully up to the task.  Will Sarrratt (who reminded me a lot of Thomas Middledith, the star of TV’s Silicon Valley) is terrific as the quirky, socially awkward and generally dysfunctional Tommy who is nonetheless quite intelligent and compassionate.  Lisa Jill Anderson succeeds in conveying a full  range of emotions as Alice, a young woman unfairly burdened with the responsibility of caring for her high maintenance grandmother.  Xavier Rooney is truly delightful as Dave, a lost soul who really isn’t sure who or what he wants out of life but is certainly going to give it his best shot.  And last, but certainly not least, is Marcia Debonis, whose exuberance, effervescence and just plain well-meaning (if often misplaced) goodness as Anne suffuse the entire production.

EINSTEIN'S DREAMS Premieres at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Zal Owen and Brennan Caldwell in EINSTEIN'S DREAMS.  Photo by Richard Termine.

Richard Feynman, the renowned Nobel Prize winning physicist, once remarked “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”  Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity may not be as incomprehensible as quantum physics but it certainly is difficult to fathom.  How, for instance, can one really get his mind around the fact that the passage of time itself is dependent upon the perspective of the observer?  Or that time slows down as one travels faster so that an interstellar space traveler moving at, say, one-tenth the speed of light could return to Earth younger than his own children?

As a consequence, writers attempting to expound upon these themes are faced with a difficult choice: they can write dry, scholarly, textbooks which may prove of value to students of physics, cosmology and mathematics but that may do little to enlighten or entertain the general reader.  Or they can sacrifice rigorous textbook explanations and adopt, instead, more metaphorical approaches to these subjects - approaches that may not be totally factually correct in an objective sense but that still will capture the essence of the issues involved.

As an example, they may note that time spent with a lover passes quickly whereas five minutes in a dentist’s chair may seem like an eternity.  Or, as Albert Einstein, himself, once expressed it:

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour.  Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute.  That’s relativity.”

This sentiment, of course, is a soft psychological truth, not a hard scientific one, but it does capture the essence of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to the effect that the passage of time can only be measured relative to an observer’s own point of view.

Alan Lightman is something of a Renaissance Man.  Having graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from Princeton and with a PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology, he went on to teach at Harvard and MIT.  But he is not only a physicist and teacher: he is also a published poet, essayist and novelist.  And so it should come as no surprise that he also is the first professor at MIT to have received a joint appointment in the sciences and the humanities - nor that he has lectured at more than 100 universities regarding the differences between the ways that scientists and artists view the world.

Lightman’s best known work, Einstein’s Dreams, originally published in 1992 and subsequently translated into 30 languages, was an international bestseller.  In the novel, set in 1905, Albert Einstein appears as a young patent clerk, struggling to make sense of the world, to distinguish his dreams from reality, and to construct his magnum opus, the Theory of Relativity.  The book consists of thirty chapters, each envisioning a different world in which time functions differently:  In one, it is “sticky,” with people “stuck” in a single moment in their lives.  In another it is circular.  In a third, it is finite and about to end.  In a fourth, it flows backwards.  In a fifth, cause and effect are not necessarily chronological .  And in yet another, it branches off into alternative universes.  

And so the question arises: If such “other” worlds did exist, how would their alternative conceptions of time affect human behavior?  And finally: Are those one encounters in one’s dreams any less real than those one encounters when awake?

(One is reminded ot the words of Lao Tzu, the Chinese Taoist philosopher who once, upon awakening from a nap during which he dreamt he was a butterfly, said: “I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”)

The book Einstein’s Dreams was adapted for the musical stage as Einstein’s Dreams by Joanne Sydney Lessner (book and lyrics) and Joshua Rosenblum (music and lyrics) more than a decade ago and debuted in London in 2005.  Now, fourteen years later it is finally enjoying its New York off-Broadway premiere at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown Manhattan in a production by the Prospect Theater Company and directed by Cara Reichel.  (I’d like to think that New York theater lovers in some alternative universe didn’t have to wait quite so long.)

In this production of Einstein’s Dreams, the struggling, dreaming Albert Einstein is played by Zal Owen; Josette, the mysterious woman of his dreams and a stand-in for time itself, is played by Alexandra Silber; Michele Besso, Einstein’s close friend, is played by Brennan Caldwell; and Peter Klausen, Einstein’s officious boss at the patent office, is played by Michael McCoy.  They are all excellent in their respective roles, as are Tess Primack in her dual roles as Mileva, Einstein’s first wife in real life and as Marta, the patent office’s typist; Stacia Fernandez as Hilda, Klausen’s world-weary secretary; Lisa Helmi Johanson as Besso’s wife, Anna; and Vishal Vaidya as Johannes Schmetterling, the patent office’s eager new emploiyee.  But I must say I was most taken with Talia Cosentino in her role as Josie, the exuberantly intelligent little girl who lit up the stage whenever she appeared.