One-Man Show on ‘Einstein’ Looks Beyond the Caricature of Disheveled Genius

Patrick Regan

The great men and women of history are destined to be portrayed as cartoon characters. Abraham Lincoln, for example, is always seen with a beard and stove-pipe hat. Marilyn on the subway grate. Einstein with his bemused expression and unkempt shock of white hair.

Of course, these caricatures are only silly pictures. Einstein wasn’t always old, and they would not have let him look like that in the Swiss patent office when he worked there as a young man. In fact, it was during that time that he came up with the theories that reshaped the scientific understand of space and time.

In “Einstein!,” Jack Fry brings the famed scientist back from the dead to set the record straight at the Santa Monica Playhouse. The story of the Einstein’s theories isn’t just the story of science and math, it’s the story of a brilliant man uncertain of how to be a father. It’s the story of a failed marriage.  And most importantly, it’s the story of the rising anti-Semitism that soon leads to the Third Reich.

Fry’s one-man show is based on historical research and seeks to explore not Einstein the genius but Einstein the man. This representation is not a legend long past, this is the story of a man living his pain and triumphs on the stage in front of us. Science never comes easy in the moment, even as we look backward, and see the obvious brilliance of a man whose very name is a synonym for genius.

Fry’s work brings back to Southern California – where he came to visit Edward Hubble and the Hale telescope on Mount Wilson – to show us that his life was not as simple as we made it out to be. Because as we now all know and maybe always have, everything is relative.

“Einstein!” comes to the Santa Monica Playhouse Dec. 20.