"The Smartest Man in the World!" from West Coast Jewish Theatre at the Pico Playhouse

When I was a child I really enjoyed musicals. My folks had old cast albums and they would take me to shows, which clearly began an early interest in the stage. My interest in musicals continued well into adulthood, but then at some point it was like a switch got flipped and I stopped wanting to go see them. For a long time I couldn't figure out why. Then one day it hit me: almost nobody seemed capable anymore of making a musical that didn't suck. "The Smartest Man in the World!" is a perfect example of why I soured on musical theatre. That and the over-use of exclamation points in musicals' titles.

The show, in brief, is a look at the (mostly later) life of famed physicist and icon Albert Einstein. So many possibilities. And yet, the mostly superior cast giving their blessed all simply could not make up for the tacky, shallow, silly, one-dimensional book by Russ Alben and John Sparks. Likewise, their excellent voices could not brighten the childish, repetitive, predictable music by Jerry Hart and AWFUL, clunky, trite lyrics by Alben (not aided in the least by the flat arrangements by Gerald Sternbach). Suffice it to say (and just for starters), in this musical world repeating a phrase (lyrical or musical) over and over is what's to pass as clever.

The story, such as it is, is told mostly through the convention of interviews with one reporter from the Jewish Daily Forward as a through-line, plus Einstein's own reminiscences of his life (read: "mostly loves"). You would hope that in putting on a piece of theatre about such an important and famous person--indeed, a giant--would strive to tell us something we didn't know about him: his hidden needs, his dark side, his life goals. Instead what we get is a collection of trivia and a lot about how he liked the ladies. And he didn't like war. Nothing else of any weight. Nothing about his process. Nothing about his actual theories or why they were so important (Can't be done? Go read or see "Copenhagen" or "Insignificance").

Now, maybe some clever direction would help this dog. But no. Herb Isaacs' staging is woefully obvious and flat, and worse: seemingly devoid of helping the actors shape characters. The always excellent Alan Safier puts on a great show as Einstein (German-speaker-taught-English-from-a-Brit accent and all!), but there are times--leg flung over the arm of the chair in which he's sitting--you can't help but wonder if the direction he got from Isaacs was "be eccentric". There are other actors on the stage--clearly competent ones-- who seems to be floundering, DESPERATE to make a character choice, having been given nothing but blocking and a costume. Every scene is played at about the same 60%. Nothing is more important than anything else until the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, and then there's 2 minutes of emoting.

And there were moronic inconsistencies. My favorite: Einstein and his assistant came to the US together. They took their citizenship test together, we are told in the show. Yet Einstein has an accent and she doesn't...until she starts to imitate him. Ugh.

Which leads us to the choreography. Anyone see "Waiting for Guffman"? Picture that. To the point where I actually needed to stifle my giggling. It makes you wonder if the director actually changed the choreography to something he understood. I've seen it happen before.

I just wanted to hug all the performers and say "God, I am SO sorry your talents are being wasted on this." Tragically, I think their performances are the cause of the good press this stinker has gotten, as most critics are not educated enough to be able to look past the big smiles and keen voices to see what's underneath: nothing.

I know musicals are hard to create. Any good theatre experience is. But there was a moment, between "Avenue Q" and "13" where I had real hope for original musicals again (as opposed to this onslaught of based-on-the-movie or collection-of-pop-hits shows we face now). Once again my hopes have been dashed. The producer was standing in the lobby, grinning and looking for complements. I wanted to slug him and demand my time back.

Bottom line: B+ for effort, F for material.

Til next time!
--HDSQ, Jr.