Review: Einsteinin rikos

In the shadow of a bomb

Einstein and the tramp discuss nuclear weapons and God.

Even today, new knowledge and the opportunities it opens up take thousands of scientists forward. But what if new knowledge makes the old sin possible? That information is used for evil or to destroy life. Why was the atomic bomb made? Since it was possible to do so, is the cynical reply. It was done because it was the way to end the war, many reply, and try to see some noble purpose in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But after the war, the weapon was not put on the shelf, but it began to be developed, and an arms race was created that threatened to plunge the world into an irrational confrontation. These big questions are dealt with in the small-scale play Einstein’s Crime by the Frenchman Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt. It premiered last winter in Paris and is now being performed on the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre.

The play, directed by Kari Heiskanen, takes place on a pier surrounded by a tramp (Pekka Huotari) who has been mistreated by life. She meets a man (Santeri Kinnunen) who resembles a famous scientist who fled the Nazi-instigated persecution of Jews to the United States in 1932. The man not only looks like Albert Einstein, but also turns out to be this. A friendship is formed between the two men, which is followed in the play for years. The men talk about life, God and the atomic bomb, among other things.

The God speech is not only an invention of the writer Schmitt, but Einstein used a lot of parables related to religion, such as “God does not roll the dice”. Einstein was a Jew and this influenced his reflections on religion, which became more critical as he got older. Behind the friendship between the tramp and Einstein is the unfortunate shadow of the US intelligence service’s suspicion of Einstein. The third man in the play is agent O’Neill (Joachim Wigelius), who lures a vagabond to report on his conversations with Einstein.

The suspicion was so great that when the United States started the so-called Manhattan Project in 1941, which aimed to make an atomic bomb, Einstein was not included in the group. A significant number of the members of the group were Europeans who had fled Nazi persecution. However, Einstein’s ideas were indirectly pointing towards a bomb.

After the war, Einstein was about to sign a joint appeal of scientists for nuclear disarmament. The play reflects on the responsibility of the scientist. In a way, it’s an old-fashioned text about big things. Kari Heiskanen’s direction does not try to offer tricks, but the one-and-a-half-hour performance is clearly constructed. It’s a pleasure to watch it and take what you can from the dialogue. The encounter between Einstein and the tramp is a made-up story, but through it we are attached to real things, such as the meaning of life.