Theatre in Review: Emergence (Pershing Square Signature Center) "Things are not as they seem," says Patrick Olson, the guiding spirit of this oddball hybrid of lecture and concert performance, and I'm certainly not going to argue with him. Indeed, he makes this statement repeatedly in Emergence, which bids fair to be the trippiest entertainment of the season. The bald, bespectacled Olson, dressed in a suit that looks like a sherbet flight, holds forth about key scientific concepts, speaking in a blank verse designed to convey an accelerating sense of wonder. Backed by singers and musicians, he launches into songs featuring amorphous lyrics about the oddities of perception and the fickle nature of time. It's like an episode of Bill Nye, the Science Guy, hijacked by a prog-rock band. Olson, the founder of a science publishing company, released an album in 2021 titled Music for Scientists, with a song list that includes items like "The Weight of Entropy" and "Properties of Light (Hello Love)." (One of them, "Moons of Jupiter," is featured in Emergence.) During what is clearly meant to be a mind-expanding experience, we are asked to ponder that living humans consist of inert matter like hydrogen, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus. We contemplate the speed of causation, which has to do with how fast light travels. Holding up a tulip, Olson reminds us that it is not yellow, as it appears; rather, it merely absorbs all the other colors in the spectrum. Eventually, Cherry Davis, one of the singers, leads in a relaxation exercise. "Tension holds us upright despite gravity," she says, "but to really focus on gravity's effect, we must lose that tension." Just between us, at this point, I needed all the tension I could get. You may recall many of the above concepts from one science class or another -- even I, who struggled to earn a gentleman's "C" in the subject was familiar with them -- but Olson acts as if he is imparting sacred mysteries. You may also have a limited tolerance for his gnomic lyrics. Exhibit A: "There's a hole in my face that sings/There's a hole in my face that sings/When I hear a tune then I think of you/And a song comes out of this thing." Then there's this: "At the bottom of my legs are feet/At the bottom of my legs are feet/And they bring me here and they take me there/And I watch them moving to the beat." I can't help feeling that audiences would enjoy Emergence more if the lobby concession stand stocked up on cannabis products. Whatever one thinks of Emergence, Olson is clearly thrilled to be onstage, inviting us to share his awe in our mysterious universe. But the text is too self-consciously mystical and the songs all sound alike thanks to their droning melodies and elliptical lyrics. The musicians are first-rate, but a trio of dancers is made to execute some extremely regrettable choreography: one of them spends an awful lot of time rolling around on the floor. The show unfolds on a bare stage, providing plenty of room for the lighting designer, Jordan Noltner, of the firm Wasted Potential, to fill the space with saturated side washes, overhead strobing effects, and chases from a series of bar units on the deck. The projections, by Jonathon Corbiere and Tyler Sammy of Futuretalk, Inc., and Nick Proctor, of Wasted Potential, consist of super-high-resolution images of planet Earth, a solar eclipse, blooming flowers, and raindrops on leaves, along with footage that unaccountably reminded me of the Raquel Welch film Fantastic Voyage. It's difficult to know what to say about Emergence, except to note that its combination of hard scientific information served up in a slightly stoned, oh-wow-man manner is unlikely to find much more than a niche audience. It means to induce a sense of wonder; it left me wondering how it got produced. --David Barbour 
|
