Photo by Magnus Hengge | studio adhoc, courtesy of the English Theatre Berlin
Friday night saw the European premier of Isaac’s Eye – a snappy play tackling the history of science – at the English Theatre Berlin.
Young Isaac Newton desperately wants to become a member of the Royal Society; his older partner Catherine wants to get married and start a family, and the renowned scientist and member of the Royal Society Robert Hooke wants Newton to stop pursuing his work on light.
In Lucas Hnath’s imagining, these three maneuver around each other in an engaging plot involving a sex diary, a man dying of the plague, and an experiment involving the insertion of a needle into the eye…
The play is self-aware, letting the audience know which of its parts are fact and which are fiction via a delightful device in which things that are based on fact are written on one of the multiple blackboards that make up the set. This self-awareness is also manifested in the playful light and sound design.
While the play’s self-reflectiveness takes away any need to simulate a 17th century setting, and results in a fresh, direct approach, it can be clunky at times (I could have done without the act /scene announcements and a few of the “he saids / she saids”).
The actors, however, execute the piece with a strong sense of rhythm and flow; Oskar Brown is straight-backed and serious as the slightly-awkward young Newton, Ben Maddox is energetic as the drug-addled rock star of science Robert Hooke, and Mary Kelly is empathetic as the warm yet weary Catherine.
It’s only after the curtain has gone down and you’ve stopped smiling that you realize how serious play is, dealing with great minds, personal sacrifice and questions of what’s important in life.
Isaac’s Eye is is on at the English Theatre Berlin (Fidicinstrasse 40, 10965 Berlin; 030 691 1211; U6: Platz der Luftbrücke) until 10th May 2014.
Filed under: Berlin, theater
