Taffeta pants make grad students worth watching

COURTESY YALE DRAMAT Who knew science could be so wacky?

When was the last time you went to a play at Yale just for the sake of your own cultural enrichment? It's probably been a while.

Unfortunately, for many non-thespian Yalies, on-campus plays are little more than a way to show love and support for dramatically inclined friends. Granted, many of the plays that our friends are in happen to be inspired, entertaining, and well-directed, but since when are those qualities enough to make you pick up the phone and reserve a ticket to a play you've never heard of?

Great Men of Science Nos. 21 and 22, an original comedy by Glen Berger, is a new production from the Yale School of Drama. If you're an undergrad, you might be disappointed to find that all of the major roles are filled by grad students (read: people you don't know). Nevertheless, this enormously intelligent, funny, and profound play deserves your attendance.

Set in 18th-century Paris--first during the Enlightenment and later during the French Revolution--Great Men of Science tells the story of two eccentric scientists. The first one, Jacques de Vaucanson (Adrian LaTourelle, DRA '99), is an optimist obsessed with the beauty of reason and the interconnectedness of the universe. When the Royal Academy of the Sciences announces a contest asking the Parisian scientific community to prove or disprove the existence of an underlying order to the seeming randomness of nature (essentially, a prototype for modern chaos theory), Jacques steps up to prove that there is "wisdom and design" behind all creation. He plans to show that all beings are, in fact, "living equations," by creating, through mathematic formulae and ratios, a mechanical duck that lives and behaves in the same random ways as a real duck.

Jacques' inspiration comes from another eccentric scientist he meets at a ball thrown by his mistress. After misplacing his shoes in a party game, Jacques goes outside to look for them near the duck pond on his mistress' estate. Instead of finding his shoes, he finds a cranky Italian scientist (Ronald Dean Nolen, DRA '00) vomiting violently. The Italian introduces himself as Lazarro Spallanzani, a scientist who, in an attempt to prove that ducks and humans have similar gastrointestinal systems, has ingested many small bags of toxic chemicals in the hope of regurgitating them whole. The experiment fails miserably, but Jacques draws inspiration from Lazarro's ducks and returns to his work. In keeping with the play's theme of interconnectedness and the belief that order comes from chaos, Lazarro disappears without a trace until he becomes the subject of play's second act.

Act Two commences in the year 1794, at the height of the Reign of Terror. Lazarro is working in a shabby Parisian basement, still vomiting violently over 50 years after his ill-fated experiment. Alone, except for one insolent housekeeper (skillfully portrayed by Joey Parsons, DRA '99) and many, many caged frogs, Lazarro is nearing the last months of his life.

As he realizes that his days are numbered, he recognizes the urgency of completing his final work as a scientist--to disprove the theory of spontaneous generation. Lazarro believes that semen is necessary for procreation, and plans to prove this through an experiment in which he fits male frogs with a primitive form of the modern condom--tiny pairs of hot-pink, tight-fitting taffeta pants--in an attempt to keep them from fertilizing the female frogs' eggs. In order to suit up his 28 amphibious test subjects, he must enlist the help of his skilled seamstress housekeeper.

Rest assured: what sounds like a bizarre, chaotic wreck of a narrative actually makes perfect sense in the context of the production. In fact, the overall coherence (and, at times, brilliance) of the show is a testament to Glen Berger's subtle writing and Wier Harman's, DRA '99, careful direction.

The play is also helped along by uniformly outstanding performances. Nolen and LaTourelle are enormously talented, as well as lucky enough to be surrounded by exceptional supporting performers. Especially gifted is Robert Devaney, DRA '00, who plays the cynical surgeon Le Cat with comedic perfection.

With Great Men of Science Nos. 21 and 22, the Drama School offers us a high-caliber production of a wonderful play, executed with the professionalism and creativity one would expect to find only in a big-city theater troupe. The company has managed to pull together the kind of production the under-funded and under-appreciated undergraduate theater program could only dream of achieving. True, if you skip this play, you may not be putting any dear friendships in peril, but you will risk missing what just might be the best production Yale has seen in a while.

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