Tonight I went to see the new play "Legacy of Light" at Arena Stage's substitute venue in Crystal City. This piece was specially commissioned by Arena from local playwright Karen Zacarias and is having its debut a half-block from my apartment. It's always exciting to see a brand new work, although about half the time the play turns out to be disappointing. Most new plays are more along the lines of rough drafts when they premiere and still need a fair amount of shaping and polishing.
That's not the case with "Legacy of Light." It's an absolutely brilliant, fully-realized play. The story takes place between and betwixt two sets of characters in two different centuries, Enlightenment Era France and modern New Jersey. In each setting there are four primary characters, two men and two women. The Enlightenment cast consists of historical figures such as Voltaire and pioneering female physicist Emilie du Chatelet, her daughter, and her young and impetuous lover, while the modern cast is composed of a female astrophysicist, her schoolteacher husband, and a struggling young woman and her brother.
The characters move around each other in various orbits and while initially they are confined to their own eras, as the play progresses the Enlightenment characters also appear in the modern setting. Whether these time travelers are ghosts, hallucinations, or something else is never fully addressed and surprisingly it doesn't really seem to matter. Their simultaneous existence in both the 18th and 21st centuries further reinforces two principles of physics discussed in the play: first, that energy is not destroyed but persists (an idea first put forth by Emilie herself) and second, that time is not constant but varies as energy increases (an idea which Einstein derived from Emilie's work).
The plot of the play focuses chiefly on women scientists who are simultaneously on the verge of important discoveries and the verge of motherhood, but it is not about just that any more than the dictionary is just about words beginning with the letter A. The writing is razor sharp and the play is dazzlingly smart, consciousness expanding, and utterly original. If you have a brain and a heart you'll enjoy it a great deal. If you're deficient on either count you probably won't care for it much, and more's the pity for you.
The set design is facilitative and unobtrusive and the costumes are, in the words of one of the characters, amazingly amazing. Many of the actors play two roles, one in each of the play's eras, and the peformances range from excellent to merely adequate. Interestingly, some of the dual performers are excellent in one part and merely adequate in the other. Standouts among the cast include the actresses playing Emilie and Olivia, the astrophysicist. The performers portraying the modern sister-brother pair are also quite good.
As if you couldn't tell by now, I enjoyed this play immensely and it's something I can't recommend highly enough. Beg, borrow, buy, or steal a ticket but by all means go. GO!
(Taken with my Nikon D90)
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