Two wild and crazy guys

The real star of Picasso at the Lapin Agile (playing at the Rubicon through April 27) is comedian and playwright Steve Martin’s witty, whimsical script, which trips along as unpredictably and, at times, unevenly, as the celebrated rabbit of its title.

Directed by William Keeler (who also appears as the art dealer Sagot), the cast features Paul Provenza, reprising the title role he first performed off-Broadway, and Jamie Torcellini, previously seen in the Rubicon’s You Can’t Take it With You, as Einstein. They are joined by a crew of regulars and visitors, including Mark Murphey in a nicely understated performance as the barfly Gaston.

Set in Montmartre in 1904, the play posits a fictional encounter at the famed bar between the young Einstein, a year shy of his breakthrough discovery of the theory of relativity, and Picasso, three years from completing his cubist masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Amid drinks and snappy commentary from the kind-hearted bartender Freddy (Marty Lodge) and his wife Germaine (Nancy Nufer), dalliances with their love interests (Amie Farrell and Alyson Schuster), and interruptions from a ludicrous imposter (Joseph Fuqua, in a crowd-pleasing performance) and an unexpected visitor (Cyrus Alexander), the two geniuses grapple over the nature of art and science, love and inspiration on the cusp of a new century.

In Martin’s imagination, genius is like sex appeal: You either have it, or you don’t. (Picasso happens to possess both, in spades.) History becomes a Darwinian struggle that kills off inferior ideas (clothes of wax) while allowing good ones (polka dots) to survive. But determination and confidence play a role, too, and fortunately both men brim with those qualities.

When Suzanne (Farrell) first meets the artist in the street, he tells her “he thinks that it means something in the future to be Picasso.” Einstein likewise asserts that his thin volume on relativity needs only one reader, German physicist Max Planck, to change the world. This is the edge of the 20th century, and the mood is still hopeful. The “Age of Regret,” as a visitor from the future notes, has not yet come to pass.

Martin’s script is often a delight, gleefully breaking the fourth wall with asides to the audience and, less successfully, pandering to the audience with obligatory jokes about the French. Martin knows how to mix the profound with the ridiculous, and intersperses his philosophical musings with a liberal dose of silliness. The impression is one of watching Martin veer between his younger and more mature artistic selves, as the melancholy of Shopgirl gets blindsided by The Jerk.

But as with any play whose plot turns mainly on dialogue, staging becomes a problem. The stationary setting of the bar does not lend itself to much movement, and each character tends to remain isolated in their alcove of space. Without visual distraction, ordinary lines stagger under the weight of excessive attention. Too often, the cast pauses, tableau-fashion, to dwell on some unworthy nugget of wisdom from a character.

The cast performs strongly, although at times they overact in their exuberance. Provenza dominates the stage as the vigorous, womanizing Spaniard who claims that “men want, women are wanted.” Tellingly, he commands the audience’s attention even when he falls silent, and his larger-than-life presence emphasizes that the artistic persona depends as much on being seen as it does on seeing. Farrell is best when she’s getting her heart broken, and Torcellini charms as the merry, inscrutable physicist who romances Schuster’s Countess.

Although Picasso received its world premiere in 1994, the timing of this production, in the first decade of another new century, seems more apropos. As the audience weighs Germaine, Freddy and the other patrons’ predictions for the 20th century against what we know to have occurred, it’s easy to wonder what lies in store for our own society, nearly a decade into a new millennium. And when Freddy realizes with a start that the year is already 1904, his bewilderment feels all too familiar.

The Rubicon’s production asks us to ponder, occasionally seriously: Which geniuses are waiting to burst forth in the 21st century? Whose names will be written in the stars? And where would we be without polka dots?   

Picasso at the Lapin Agile runs through April 27 at the Rubicon Theater (1006 E. Main St., Ventura). For tickets and show times, call 667-2912 or visit www.rubicontheatre.org.