Review: Einsteinin rikos
TO BE EINSTEIN OR NOT TO BE?
The new play asks giant questions, with a small framework, with the help of strong professionals. The brand new play The Crime of Einstein was suddenly premiered in Finland. French top name Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s novelty premiered less than a year ago in Paris, and now already in Helsinki. In between, there is room for both Timo Torikka’s Finnish translation and, of course, the multi-generational work process in the theatre.
That’s good.
The physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955) is the prism through which Schmitt glimpses the creative intellect, the freedom and responsibility of science. Einstein, who emigrated from Nazi Germany in 1933, was a professor at Princeton University in the United States, and he was defined by Judaism, pacifism, and enormous scientific breakthroughs.
The play takes place between the 1930s and Einstein’s death in 1955. Einstein (Santeri Kinnunen), who is sailing in the waters of New Jersey, befriends a guy on the shore (Pekka Huotari), and the third person is an FBI agent (Joachim Wigelius) who shadows Einstein.
Of course, the clear-cut arrangement is dislocated over time, but the stage image remains set designer Markku Hakuri’s picturesque composition of the beach, the pier and light clouds. All the while, it is as if we are on the last shore, where World Reason and the lay man who embarrassingly questions it are fighting. Both are still supervised by a higher authority.
The road of destruction ploughed by nuclear physics – the A-bomb and the V-bomb – plays a central role in relation to the World War II raging around us. What can and is allowed to be done to overcome war and evil, for peace and humanity?
The reflections do not remain abstract, but are linked to situations and choices: the American Manhattan Project, the differences between Roosevelt and Truman, Hiroshima, the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons…
The undercurrent is still Einstein’s relationship with his background, Germany and the Holocaust. “I went to bed as a German, I woke up a Jew,” he sums up the Germany of the early 1930s. The interlocutor also has their own shadows behind them.
They discussed their grand themes in a suitably small way, on the pier, by the glass, on foot. The global shocks are brought to the fore with some memorable effects that are not used to the point of waste at all. A speech play relies on speech.
The most dramatic thing is Einstein’s shock and sadness over his own achievements. We don’t know if it was really harrowing, as the scientist can probably deduce or at least guess how his scientific insights might be applied.
“I thought we would be free from wars, but the result was the Cold War,” Einstein says in disappointment. Kinnunen plays Einstein impressively, completely stripped of his comedy mannerisms. He balances the movement and the sound and does not overdo it in one direction or another. The same applies to Kulkuri, where Huotari once again makes use of his famously strong speech expression skills. Wigelius, who is rarely seen on the stage of the City Theatre, is not left behind, but his professional of suspicion enriches the picture.
Only three roles are a rewarding and at the same time dangerous equation for the actors. The chances of success and failure are more or less equal. For skilled professionals, the first option is closer when there are a few more performances.
Kari Heiskanen’s control does not waver, the blows hit like a sharp straight. At a couple of points, he still relies too firmly on the substantive power of the dialogue, when the audience is already tuning in to some kind of directing sidelines. Time refines the rhythm.
Einstein’s crime does not throw unambiguous answers to the giant questions. However, the viewer was reminded of a short guideline for science: maximum freedom beforehand, maximum morality afterwards.