Insignificance

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

John Arp carries the soul of the universe in his eyes, which is appropriate since he plays a Professor closely related to Albert Einstein.

John Arp as Professor and Rhonda Brown as Actress in the Mizel Center Theatre Company’s production of Insignificance at the Pluss Theatre, Mizel Center for Arts and Culture at the JCC. Photo by Eric Weber

Rhoda Brown carries the weight of a bright intelligent woman who becomes an incredibly popular actress flirting with obsession steered in the direction of portraying the dumb blond that destroys her much like Marilyn Monroe.

William Hahn takes on the demeanor of an obsessed baseball player. He knows baseball, bubble gum popping, knows he is every boy’s hero, knows he loves his actress wife, without knowing how to love her, much like the one and only Joe DiMaggio.

Michael Morgan scurries around in mind and body as an over indulgent, power hungry senator who enjoys throwing around the weight of the House Un-American Activity committee of the 1950s. Label someone a Communist, and the world sat at the feet of Senator Joe McCarthy lusting after accusation, fearing being accused.

Place them together in a 1953 New York Hotel room, and the result is British playwright’s Terry Johnson’s stunning tragic-comedy, Insignificance. Currently playing at the Mizel Center of the Arts with Director John Ashton fine-tuning the intricate, humorous, heart breaking ‘turmoiled’ relationship between the four unlikely candidates to be in the same room at the same time. Representing beauty, intelligence, power and strength the four greatly admired elements stand on marble pedestals in American culture.

Designed for the Black Box Pluss Theatre, in the Mizel Center, Insignificance creases laughter into mind-numbing sadness from what white marbled pedestals do to and with individuals who win the coveted awards. Signed, sealed and delivered the chosen are no longer allowed to be anything but their labels of beauty, intelligence, power, and strength.

Playing the “what if” game, Johnson’s imagination carries him into a brilliant realm of deliberate insight.

Seeking solace from the riotous uproar of constant publicity demands, the Actress seeks out the Professor in his hotel room at 3:30 AM after a long exhausting publicity shoot with her skirt blowing up over her head. She wants to meet the Professor, she wants to converse with him, she aches to engage in a respectable conversation with him about his theory of relativity. She wants to be heard, respected and honored for her thought process, an element she was never allowed to expose to her beauty hungry world. Brown wraps herself snugly in all of these elements. Nervous, embarrassed, uncertain, eager, animated, excited tumble out of Brown as The Actress all at the same time.

After the slick, power infatuated overly confident threat posed by The Senator to the Professor; the latter discovers an amused interest in the blond intrusion.

Morgan’s slick attack on The Senator with intimidating gestures, digging assumptions, and “you’ll-do-it-my-way-or-or-else” approach to the Professor allows Morgan to give the performance of a life-time in capturing a death hold on his misguided belief system.

The Actress’ description of Einstein’s theory of relativity is giggled with humor on a level elementary children could comprehend. There ought to be a schoolteacher alert to incorporate the text into elementary science classes. It’s a dazzling entertaining right on target explanation of the renowned theory. It could well be the light switch to ignite young minds intrigued to flirt with science. For adults who continue to feel they cannot comprehend the theory of relativity, Terry’s words breathed into the mouth of The Actress ought to open up intriguing thoughts. It’s radiant to put them into the animated mind of an actress representing a body of beauty, without the world ever being allowed to see the depth of her thinking process. The Professor’s amusement and delight in her enthusiastic explanation incorporates a placid confidence. Arp’s eyes shine through the captured weariness his sweatshirt, wrinkled khaki pants and bare feet exploit from the Senator’s unplugged power struggle.

When the bubble gum-popping macho Baseball player storms the hotel room door, Hahn bursts in exhibiting torment, anger, frustration, ignorance, all at the same time. His wife hasn’t been home for two weeks. He appears to understand her, but he doesn’t want to exhibit the exhaustion of understanding. Hahn is stunning in his ramifications of the complicated fictional DiMaggio.

The scenario provides Johnson for a roller coaster dialogue into knowledge and truth and understanding. “Knowledge is not truth. Understanding is truth.” When someone says, “I know,” he stops thinking. “Knowledge is not truth, it is merely agreement.”

With a hotel atmosphere set design by Tina Anderson, and an eerie emphatic lighting design by Jim Kaiser, the ambiance cuts deep into the human struggles with their home run hits and strike outs in the lives of the four imaginary celebrities dancing to their own on stage music.

The significance of Insignificance plays heartedly throughout the laughs, the musings, the giggles, and the heartbreak of thinking minds passing each other silently in the night with a neon sign blaring its light across the street from the hotel.

The significance of physical resemblances plays a highly insignificant arena within this intriguing thought-provoking encounter. A blond wig does not a Marilyn Monroe make, or gray spiraling hair and a mustache do not an Einstein make, although many have tried and failed. What these four polished actors are successful at, is turn the inside stuff inside out to provide the heartbeats of the soul, the varied colors of the mind, the vulnerabilities of the bodies, and the disconnections of their humanness to project indelible portraits of complicated individuals forced to live in a one dimensional world. Insignificance becomes highly significant.

Insignificance is an amazing production supplying energetic subtle deliberate direction, breath-taking performances, and knowledge that gives insight, which gives understanding, which gives wisdom, which transports truth. First class all the way, Insignificance needs to be on the “must see” list. You have until May 20. Do it.