Noted U.S. playwright’s Toronto debut
Isaac’s Eye (out of 4) Written by Lucas Hnath. Directed by Adam Belanger. Until Oct. 20 at the Assembly Theatre, 1479 Queen St. W. unit102actors.com
Last month, American Theatre Magazine released its list of the 20 most produced playwrights in the United States of the 20182019 season (not counting A
Christmas Carol and anything by Shakespeare, thankfully). Topping the list, beating out Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard and August Wilson, was Lucas Hnath. The Orlando-born, Obie Award-winning playwright’s latest Broadway turn, A Doll’s
House, Part 2, is also the most produced play of the season — coming to Toronto’s CAA Theatre next March as part of the Off-Mirvish season.
But Toronto’s theatre Unit102 Actors Company got to Hnath first with Isaac’s Eye, the official Toronto debut of a Hnath play.
Long-time stage designer Adam Belanger directs for the first time with this dark comedy, which premiered in 2013 and dramatizes the events surrounding an odd but true fact from the life of scientist Isaac Newton: that he once stuck a “bodkin” (a sewing needle) in his eye and proceeded to poke around. That moment from Newton’s experiments is the springboard that Hnath uses to dig into the thin membrane (pardon the visual) between confidence and hubris in the search for scientific truths.
In Isaac’s Eye, Newton (Christo Graham) is early in his career and desperate to be admitted into the Royal Society. He needs the approval of the far more successful Robert Hooke (Brandon Thomas) — known for Hooke’s Law of physics, inventing meteorology and an early version of the telephone, and for blowing up the lungs of at least 12 dogs. The problem is that Newton’s experiments are at odds with Hooke’s on the subject of light, so they devise a final experiment that could physically blind them as they’re blinded by their own self-perceived genius.
Hnath’s portrayal of this fictional meeting between Newton and Hooke at a pivotal moment in the 1880s draws in Newton’s potential fiancée, Catherine (Laura Vincent), and an unlucky man named Sam (Francis Melling) suffering from the plague. A narrator (also played by Melling, who’s more engaging when given a character than as narrator) literally outlines the facts on the walls of Belanger’s wood-panelled set.
The chalk from these notes seems to settle on the entirety of Graham, who embodies Newton as described by the narrator: an old man in a young man’s body. Graham seems an actor beyond his years, with a memorable face that fits the description — and that’s seeing beyond the white hair spray and baggy clothes that Belanger dresses him in.
On the other hand, Thomas is the epitome of Mad Menchic as Hooke — sleek leather shoes and a sharp three-piece suit complete with slick hair and a whiskey in a cut-glass tumbler — setting these characters in different worlds, even time periods, in this anachronistic play that blurs fact and fiction, and analyzes the power held in facts and secrets, or at least by those who can write them down first.
In Isaac’s Eye, you can see the seeds of what eventually will make Hnath a household theatre name: primarily, the meta element of the narrator and the dry humour that overcasts the entire play.
What stops this from being a great play is that it’s overly didactic in its message and rather careless to its female character, a device who exists only so that Newton can learn.
And Belanger sometimes gets trapped in his blocking within the tiny Assembly Theatre space, though he shows a nice command of timing in this dark comedy. With a little more experimentation, he might be onto much bigger revelations.