Symmetry
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Symmetry has a conventional structure: boy gets opportunity, boy loses opportunity, boy gets different opportunity. Oscar Newman is a brilliant physicist teaching at Albuquerque State out of a mysterious all-consuming loyalty to his mentor, department head Neal Julian. The setting is also conveniently near the home of Oscar’s late mother, a famous watercolorist conveniently influenced by the Eastern philosophy taught by Oscar’s office mate, equally brilliant scholar Ecco Sagada, who’s consigned to Albuquerque for equally mysterious reasons. When Oscar writes a mind-blowing paper, the vultures descend on him: gazillionaire John Slocum, who wants to co-opt his talents for commerce; elderly physicist Edmond Lakos, who wants to recruit him for Berkeley; and Neal, who wants his continued presence at Albuquerque as collateral for Slocum’s investment in a new building. Oh, and Neal’s wife, Myra, wants to (1) sleep with Oscar and (2) return to New York.
Field’s characters are interesting, with the exception of Sagada: her philosophical knowledge consists of fortune-cookie nuggets–everything is nothing and vice versa–and her move into Oscar’s office in act one produces no results whatsoever in act two. But the plot is overstuffed: Oscar turns out to be the son of an intelligence officer killed mysteriously, Slocum and Lakos are both Hungarian refugees, Neal is dying, Sagada happens to have a book by an Indian physicist that happens to illuminate the very problem Oscar is wrestling with, and on and on. All these threads are worth following, but if you weave every which way with a piece of naturalistic theater, you end up with a knotty mess instead of a tapestry. This script could have been about how three men compete to be Oscar’s father, or about Oscar’s discovery that physics and Eastern religion are one, or about how academic politics distorts the search for truth, or even about the kindness of strangers–but it can’t be about all of them.
When: Through 7/10: Tue-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 3 PM. Wed 6/22, 2 and 8 PM.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Liz Lauren.
