25th February - 1st March 2003
Directed by Damon Wakelin
Special Matinee : Saturday 1st March, 2.30pm - proceeds from this performance will go to the Havant Arts Centre Silver Fund
Steve Martin is most famous as the author and star of numerous Hollywood movies. His screenplay credits include
'Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid', 'LA Story' and 'Roxanne'. Picasso at the Lapin
Agile was first performed by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Co. in 1993 to public and critical acclaim.
'More laughs, more fun and more delight than anything currently on the New York stage'
(New York Observer)
Paris, October 1904, just before tea time, Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein, both on the verge of greatness, meet for the first time… At least, they do in the author's imagination and we are treated to an hilarious and touching view of genius, creativity and the birth of the 20th Century. But who will be the third point of this Century forming triangle, this creative triptych? Could it be the mysterious Visitor or maybe the irrepressible Charles Dabernow Schmendiman?
"In the twentieth century, no political movement will be as glorious as the movement of the line across the paper, the note across the staff, or the idea across the mind."
Winner of 1996 New York Outer Critics' Circle Awards for "Best Play" and "Best Playwright," PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE is set in 1904 in a bohemian Paris bistro, the Lapin Agile. Steve Martin's play revolves around an imaginary meeting between a passionate Pablo Picasso and a fiery Albert Einstein. The two young men on the threshold of fame vie for the attentions of a young lady and for each others respect in an hilarious battle of ideas about painting, probability, lust, and the future of the world. One year later, Albert Einstein published the Special Theory of Relativity. Three years later, Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles D'Avignon
"Very engaging! Very good fun! It's difficult not to like characters so dizzily confident of the new century and of their places in it!"
Vincent Canby, The New York Times
"More laughs, more fun and more delight than anything currently on the New York stage."
John Heilpern, New York Observer
"The most exciting new playwright in town! 'PICASSO' is a major treat! Its very presence brings hope for the current theatre!"
Linda Winer, NEWSDAY
"Steve Martin's comic wit has never been sharper!"
David Patrick Stearns, USA Today
"I'm ready to call the talent police! Steve Martin...way too much talent. This is the best first play I've seen. Steve Martin's terrific script mixes real ideas, brilliant surprises and 3,000 laughs!"
Joel Siegel, WABC-TV (New York)
"An invigorating vaudeville for the mind. Full of laughs and intriguing ideas about art and science and celebrity and creativity. The liveliest show in town! Exhilarating stuff!"
Dennis Cunningham, WCBS-Channel 2 (New York)
"Truly worth seeing! Steve Martin approaches playwriting with the energy and the reinless irony that he used in the mid-1970s to transform stand-up comedy. Martin's brain works at full throttle as he attacks the boundaries and traditions of theater!"
Laurie Winer, Los Angeles Times
"It's a hit!" in San Francisco (1996)
"It's a hit: Steve Martin's ``Picasso at the Lapin Agile,'' having grossed half a mill the first week, has been extended for six. Call me showoaf: The original name of that delightful Montmartre bar was Le Lapin a Gilles, Gilles and his rabbit being the founders ..."
"...STILL, I bestirred myself to get to the theater, and struck magic. Steve Martin's 'Picasso at the Lapin Agile,' now running to packed houses at Theater on the Square, has charm, wit, point and a knockout cast. This is the play, set in a Montmartre bar in 1904, wherein Picasso meets Albert Einstein (they never actually met) and generates heat, light and firecracker bursts of revelations. It's unfair to single out an actor in this brilliant ensemble, but Mark Nelson is unforgettable as the 25-year-old Einstein. Not to be missed: the timing of his awestruck ``I never thought the 20th century would be handed to me so casually'' when he first sees a Picasso sketch. Paul Provenza plays Picasso to the hilt and frankly, I never had a better time in the thittir."
Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle
"Martin paints a lively 'PICASSO'. The play brings a spritzy helium lift to its subject. The smart casting, vivid performances, and able direction give off a gratifying high-gloss shine!"
Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle
"A rollicking good time ...an enjoyable ninety-minute romp. Rich in comic banter and hilarious monologues!"
Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Examiner
"90 minutes of hilarity that shows what might have happened if absurdist Ionesco had written for the Marx Brothers. A raging stream of jokes. Solid cast from top to bottom! A triple shot of laughs with a couple of deep thoughts for a chaser! "
Pat Craig, Contra Costa Times
"A pow-wow of dizzying proportions. The goofiness that oozes from Picasso is infectious. Picasso playfully straddles the profound and the absurd ...splattering the whole affair with a sense of fun!"
Mark De La Vina, San Jose Mercury News
| Freddy | Richard Le Moignan |
| Gaston | Peter Corrigan |
| Germaine | Vicky Hayter |
| Einstein | Neil Kendall |
| Suzanne | Francine Huin-Wah |
| Sagot | Simon Walton |
| Picasso | Martin McBride |
| Schmendiman | Mark Wakeman |
| Countess | Francine Huin-Wah |
| Female Admirer | Francine Huin-Wah |
| Visitor | Nathan Chapman |
Much of what occurs in Steve Martin’s inventive comedy is based in reality, yet it owes much of its appeal to the author’s many flights of fancy.
So what is real?
Clearly Einstein and Picasso are real, both are icons of the twentieth century and both are acknowledged as being responsible for helping to shape our modern age, indeed for defining our very perceptions of science and art. This forms the intellectual and theoretical core of the play as Martin explores the notions of art as science and science as art, not to mention the intrinsic nature of ‘genius’.
Beyond these two there is a good deal of ‘truth’ in the structure of the play.
The Lapin Agile was, still is, a real bar in the Montmarte district of Paris and
Picasso really did drink there. Indeed, Picasso painted the bar, (and I don’t
mean a nice Magnolia with rag-roll effect), and many of its regulars feature in
his work. The barman, Freddy in the play, Frede in reality, for instance, is
seen playing the guitar in Picasso’s ‘Au Lapin Agile’.
Clovis Sagot was genuinely an art agent responsible for promoting much of Picasso’s work and, in his earlier life, a clown in the circus! Germaine is based on a real life friend of Picasso’s, Germaine Gargallo who sat for at least half a dozen paintings and was herself a regular at the Lapin Agile. And Suzanne is based on Fernande Olivier, Picasso’s lover for 8 years. The two of them met in August 1904 and it is this relationship that is widely held to be responsible for Picasso’s shift from his Blue to his Rose periods.
The mysterious visitor who arrives as the ‘third point of the triangle’ is also a real person, although to reveal who that person is would be to surrender the element of surprise they represent!
And the flights of fancy?
Well, it is impossible that the visitor could be in Paris in 1904, (you’ll have to trust me on that one until you see the show!), and of course Einstein and Picasso never actually met. Indeed, there is no evidence to suggest that Einstein ever visited the Lapin Agile or that he had a glamorous female benefactor around 1904.
And the other characters? The Female Admirer appears to be no more than a future echo of the fanatic/groupie phenomena Martin would have experienced as a late twentieth century movie star; Gaston seems to be an archetypal, even generic, old Frenchman and then there is Schmendiman. Schmendiman is a force of nature, a character that most resembles Steve Martin himself, most especially his earliest stand-up comedy persona.
Martin’s sense of the cinematic is also evident with exciting stage directions such as ‘the roof folds back to reveal a starry sky’, as well as breaking the theatrical fourth wall convention on a number of occasions and allowing for addresses direct to camera, as it were.
Unlike a number of previous productions we have found during our research, we have opted for a Lapin Agile that is eclectic, cluttered and mildly anarchic. The Lapin Agile of 1904 was a haven for artists, poets, writers and musicians and had a distinctly bohemian air. Pictures of the bar from the period show a space that is bursting with activity and creativity; every available wall space is filled with paintings and sketches of every conceivable style and influence, an effect we have attempted to re-create. It seems that every artist that has passed through the bar has left his or her mark on the space.
We are greatly indebted to David Penrose, not only for his imaginative set design but also for his reproduction of the original Lapin Agile sign, which can be seen hanging on the set. It is from this painting that the bar drew its name. Thanks are due too, to Jo Tester for her sterling efforts with the grand Picasso reproduction that is such a key part of the play’s action.
