Review: The City Theatre’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile

There’s no banjo playing, happy feet, or Czech wild and crazy guys in Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

Instead, stand-up comic/actor/author-turned-playwright Steve Martin’s wildly inventive, highly conceptual sense of humor – the stuff that earned him the 2005 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and drives his smart Hulu original series Only Murders in the Building – abounds in this fun piece of absurdist historical fiction, currently on stage at City Theatre Austin.

The play features a chance meeting between a young Albert Einstein (Timothy Allen) and Pablo Picasso (Joshua Nunez) at a bar in Paris in 1904. The two engage in clever wordplay and a passionate exchange of perspectives on the magnificence of culture and science, just before the unpublished scientist reshapes theoretical physics and the about-to-be-celebrated painter transforms the world of art.

Yeah, this sounds a tad highbrow for a guy who spent much of his professional stage career with an arrow through his head. Not to worry. Martin manages to also fill the stage with surprising moments of pure foolishness, such as a running gag about incontinence and an intellectual duel between Einstein and Picasso where the weapon of choice is a pencil. There’s also a bit of playful meta-theatrics thrown in, such as when bartender Freddy (Wray Crawford) sends Einstein offstage upon his first entrance because he is supposed to be fourth in order of appearance in the playbill, not third.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in 1993, takes its inspiration from Picasso’s 1905 painting “At the Lapin Agile,” now hanging at the Met in New York. In this celebrated work, Picasso depicts himself as a commedia dell’arte Harlequin and his drinking companion at the bistro is his current lover Germaine Pichot who, in this play, serves as a wise and truth-telling barmaid (Anne Hulsman). The painting was commissioned by Frédéric Gérard, who can be seen in the painting’s background playing guitar, while in the play he has been cast as the lovable bartender.

Many theatre critics have not been particularly kind to this work, and perhaps this is why the show never advanced to Broadway. But these comments clearly miss the fact that Martin – like a young Picasso and his self-portrait in “At the Lapin Agile” – doesn’t take himself or his work as seriously as the critics do, and has managed to merge inanity and brilliant writing to create an intriguing and rather unique art form. The players at City Theatre Austin, under Andy Berkovsky’s perceptive direction, get this, and perform the play with remarkably straight faces amidst perfect comic timing. Allen as Einstein is especially adept at this and is charming. So is Nunez as Picasso, though his brooding often results in a delayed pick up of cues that momentarily slows down the otherwise rapid-fire proceedings.

Throughout this play, Martin bequeaths wonderful gifts to the actors playing secondary characters in the form of brilliantly written monologues that allow them to briefly own the room upon stepping onto the stage. Tom Swift as the elderly Gaston, Kyle Romero as art dealer Sagot, Holley Garrison as Picasso’s one-night stand, Suzanne, Angelina Castillo as the Countess/a female admirer, Sebastian Garcia as a mysterious stranger from the future, and the hilarious Payton Trahan as self-important but ineffective inventor Charles Dabernow Schmendima, milk them for all they are worth.

Director Berkovsky, who doubles as set designer, provides a believable if not very lived-in turn-of-the-century Parisian bar in which to play. He has also chosen to turn this lengthy one-act play into two acts, which is a kind convenience for the audience but tends to disrupt the forward momentum of the play as it ventures into increasingly absurd territory.

Still, the end result is a thoroughly enjoyable romp, not to be taken seriously and most certainly not to be missed.

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Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Trinity Street Playhouse, 901 Trinity, 512/470-1100
citytheatreaustin.org
Through July 17
Running time: 1 hr., 45 mins.