Royal Academy of Dramatic Art did an exceptional job with this play by David Byrne. It is by far my favorite straight play that I have ever seen. It constantly broke the 4th wall. All characters speak directly to the audience but the main narrator, Ava uses the audience as students in a university lecture room. Ava gives her lecture, the past literally intruding upon the stage. The play seamlessly morphs from her presentation into physical scenes from the 1940s.
I was in the first row so it was incredible & being included in this story about humanity was a very special experience.
The dialogue is so complex & I was super impressed by the actors ability to perform these huge monologues. I happened to go to the day they were doing a Q&A and I asked them how they approached this as well as addressing the audience directly. They said it was daunting in a way, especially because it is such a small room & they can see every single persons face. They could see how everything landed on everyone & each day was different. Although, living as the character & focusing on their intention, it was fulfilling work for them. During the Q/A I realized that the actor who played Bruno did not have a lisp & that is when I figured out that the real life mathematician had a lisp. I genuinely believed that the actor had a natural lisp!
The set & tech was incredible!
This play is directly inspired by the book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah & is inspired by the true story and life of the mathematician and broadcaster Dr. Jacob “Bruno” Bronowski.
David Byrnes play is philosophical & It spans three time frames: the present, Bronowski’s wartime career working for the government on a top secret project that led to the firebombing of Dresden and thousands of civilian deaths, and the distant past when our ancestors walked the earth. It considers the vestigial traits that we carry with us from the past and what it is that truly makes us human.
“What could one of the world’s leading intellectuals want to hide in a locked room in his house? Long after his death, his grandson, Jamie, meets a young research assistant, Ava, on Tinder. She persuades him to open the room and together they unearth six million years of human history… along with a more personal and disturbing secret about Jamie’s grandfather” – Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Theatre in London U of A 