Taking On Challenges of Martin’s ‘Picasso’

Andrew Barnicle confesses he failed to meet one of his goals as director of Laguna Playhouse’s production of Steve Martin’s comedy “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” a fictitious encounter between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein in a Parisian bar in 1904.

Barnicle, the playhouse’s artistic director since 1991, wanted to know his stuff. He cracked the books--a stack of information on Picasso and Einstein--figuring he would give his cast a quick tutorial in the ideas that flit through the play, so the actors could be on sure footing amid its breezy swirl of intellect.

“I swore to myself I was going to be able to understand the theory of relativity before I got to this production, but I never quite got there,” Barnicle said. “It was one of the hardest first-rehearsal speeches I ever had to give.”

He says he fared better with Cubism, and he had JD Roberto, who plays Picasso, help bail him out when he foundered in his explanation of relativity.

The play, a hit in two previous runs in Los Angeles, and a hot ticket again in Laguna, envisions the titans as a lusty, passionate young bull (Roberto’s Picasso) and an amiably flirtatious young teddy bear (David Ellenstein’s Einstein).

They meet, cross wits, show how rightfully full of themselves they are on the cusp of their respective breakthroughs (Picasso, at 23, hasn’t yet unhatched Cubism, but he can feel it literally at his fingertips; Einstein, 25, has written but not yet published his “Special Theory of Relativity”).

They spar about whether art or science is the more elegant and probing vehicle for exploring reality and creating beauty. Recognizing that each is going to reshape humanity’s view of the world in the dawning century, they embrace as brothers in revolutionary arms.

Martin crosses PBS with “Cheers” by giving them a barroom setting and letting them play off of its cast of comical denizens.

During an interview over lunch recently at the Cedar Creek Inn in Laguna, Barnicle and Richard Stein, the playhouse’s executive director, worked their way through pasta and toward a new theory of relativity: Everything in the world is somehow related to “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.”

Among the subjects that came up:

* The nature of genius, and people they’ve known who qualify for the title. Barnicle cites Stephen Sondheim, whom he once met, and Anthony Bowles, an English composer and arranger he befriended during his days as an actor in New York.

Stein points to Aaron Copland, whom he shepherded around Rochester, N.Y., one day in 1979 (the composer was conducting the local symphony orchestra in a program of his work; Stein was head of an area arts council).

He also sees genius in Craig Bohmler, composer of “Gunmetal Blues,” a musical staged at the playhouse last spring. “Geniuses are able to cut through everything and see the kernel of what’s really there,” Stein said.

* The prevalence in the arts of the angst-ridden modernist sensibility that Picasso and Einstein helped forge by debunking old verities about the nature of things. Barnicle points to his favorite, Sondheim, whose musicals “tend to be down, and as brilliant as they are, they tend not to be crowd-pleasers.” And yet, the director says, he doesn’t want to endorse the idea that “If it’s pleasant it can’t possibly be good.”

* Whether turn-of-the-next-century college graduates will emerge from ‘90s youth-cultural irony, cynicism and malaise to pour forth in “the naughts”--as one of Martin’s characters dubs the ‘00s--with the confidence and passion of the play’s young Picasso and Einstein. Stein finds hope in today’s computer-jock-on-a-skateboard ethos of brilliance paired with daring.

* Whether we should believe the mysterious, time-traveling celebrity from the future who arrives at the play’s end to help Picasso, Einstein and friends toast the 20th century. “[In] this century,” proclaims the cultural icon, who is referred to in the script only as a visitor, “the accomplishments of artists and scientists outshone the accomplishments of politicians and governments.”

True, or not? This, Stein said, is a no-brainer for many playgoers in government-averse Orange County: “On opening night [that line] got a warm response from wonderful Orange County libertarians. At the first preview, there was actually a cheer.”

Are these weighty topics a bit too much to balance atop a play that is a quirky exercise in levity? Is it foolish to expect audiences, after chuckling at Einstein’s line about “icebox laughs”--jokes you don’t get at first, but which thaw out and hit you an hour later--to conduct icebox bull sessions an hour after the play, pondering The Meaning of the 20th Century?

“I’d like to hope that they are,” Barnicle said. “Audiences laugh first and think about it later. When there’s something you want to impart to the world, you get to sort of cover it with pastry so they don’t realize what’s inside is liver or broccoli.”

For Barnicle and Stein, mounting “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” at century’s end was a case of better late than earlier. First produced in October 1993 by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, “Picasso” came to the Westwood (now Geffen) Playhouse in Los Angeles for a six-week stand in 1994. It turned into a record-setting 10-month run.

The Laguna Playhouse leaders coveted it for their 1998-99 season, but they were beaten to it by the Wilshire Theatre. The year’s delay has only helped, they say: Barnicle and Stein knew this play set at the century’s dawn made perfect sense as the final 20th century production at a theater that, founded in 1920, has been along for most of the ride.

The Laguna Beach “Picasso,” like previous ones, has won favorable reviews and is the hit Barnicle and Stein anticipated.

As a light entertainment that offers some intellectual morsels to munch on, “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” helps Barnicle and Stein strike a certain programming balance. Each season they wrestle with the awareness that E=MC2 does not hold true in the world of show biz, where “E,” the elusive energy particle of creative excellence, tends to dwindle in proportion to M(ake) C(ash), the massive survivalist imperative of paying a theater’s bills.

Stein predicts that the farcical hit “Picasso,” will sell more than twice as many nonsubscription tickets as “The Glass Menagerie,” the somber Tennessee Williams classic.

“We don’t shy away from doing a classic or new work, a provocative work, although we are cautious,” Stein said. “We work in a wide spectrum, but the center of our spectrum is closer to the mainstream,” Barnicle added.

The path to more adventurousness, they said, lies with stepped-up fund-raising efforts; a bigger cash cushion would provide more leeway for experimentation.

This year marks a good progression, Stein said. In 1998-99, he said, the playhouse raised $275,000 from donors; this year’s goal is $600,000, and fund-raising is going better than projected.

On the horizon is a second theater that might provide a home for new and cutting-edge plays. The Laguna Playhouse acquired an adjacent office complex in 1998, but no official plans for its remodeling and reuse have been announced.

For now, Stein and Barnicle, the architects of theater seasons since their respective arrivals in 1990 and 1991, can relate appreciatively to the juggling act they credit Martin with pulling off in “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.”

“At the start you have these funny gags, and just when it starts to get a little shticky, it starts to delve into some serious subject,” Stein said. “And then, when his traditional audience might find it getting too serious, he brings in shtick again.”

“Our overall approach is similar to Steve Martin’s play,” Barnicle added. “Hit ‘em with some farce, end up with some sentiment,” and balance it with some substance. “That sort of says what one of our seasons is about, and even what our decade is about.”

“Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” Laguna Playhouse’s Moulton Theatre, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Dark Nov. 25; matinee only Dec. 5. Ends Dec. 5. $21-$40. (949) 497-2787.