Revived 'Einstein on the Beach' retains its exponential magic

Ann Arbor- Back in 1976 when the Philip Glass-Robert Wilson opera "Einstein on the Beach" had its premiere, the spectacle of its third revival here Friday night might have been called a happening. In an essential spiritual sense, the 4 ½-hour production, staged without intermission, involved the audience no less than the company of singers, speakers, dancers and instrumentalists.

The opera's remounting in Ann Arbor - after previous iterations in 1984 and 1992 -- has itself been a saga, a three-week project headed by composer Glass and director-designer Wilson to get "Einstein" ready for its official re-introduction in Montpellier, France, in March. The production then goes to London as part of the Cultural Olympiad. The North American premiere will take place at Toronto's Luminato Festival this summer. Performances also are planned at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the University of California before the tour winds up in Amsterdam.

What's being offered in this weekend at the Power Center for the Performing Arts here is an opportunity to glimpse the opera's revival in progress. That some of the structural seams remain visible in this complicated enterprise is unimportant. The play is very much the thing, and it is fascinating, often breathtaking, indeed stunning in its undiminished freshness.

Glass and Wilson have always insisted that it's for the audience to make of "Einstein" what it will. There is no story, no plot, no linear sequence of ideas, but there is absolutely an emotional locus and a dramatic weight. Making those connections is the responsibility - the role -- of each member of the observing audience. In exactly that spirit, it's also up each viewer to decide what the opera is about.

To some degree, "Einstein on the Beach" really is about the great mathematician: Wilson's scenic design alludes to him through projected mathematical symbols, just as we perceive that great mind in the ellipses of Glass' repetitive musical motifs and Lucinda Childs' choreographic gestures. We also see Einstein in a look-alike violinist, complete with big white hair and a moustache, who tosses off long stretches of virtuosic music from a spotlighted position at the front of the stage, sometimes as part of the small pit ensemble and sometimes in ruminative solos, or perhaps soliloquies.

Although "Einstein" incorporates some spoken text, the extensive singing - by soprano, tenor and chamber choir - involves mostly numbers, pitch names (do-re-mi) and random syllables. Yet the expressivity derived from Glass' magical "minimalist" settings is deeply experienced. One sustained, intricate chorus, fraught with Glass' typically shifting meters, sparked the kind of applause one might expect for Verdi's "Va, pensiero" in "Nabucco."

When "Einstein on the Beach" was new…well, that's a sentence that may never be completed. It has always been new, and indeed may always be. Let's say, then, in its inimitable uniqueness, "Einstein" is endlessly intriguing. More to the point, it is mesmerizing -- like the leaves on a tree, the panoply of stars, the faces on a crowded avenue. As we watch and listen, the sameness resolves itself into an amalgam of singularities, and the meaning we find there is projected from within us.

That's the happening of "Einstein on the Beach." It plays out as a series of acts - though not entirely in the theatrical sense of the word. There's a bit of vaudeville here. It is a highly disciplined, rigorously articulated variety show, one that beguiles the imagination and keeps you eager for what's coming next. And when you feel the need to stretch your legs, get a drink or visit the restroom, you just get up and go, and come back when you like. It was about an hour into this performance, played to a packed house, when the first bold patrons stood and slipped out. Thereafter, the comings and goings were constant. (I took a break at the three hour mark.)

Yet actual defections were few. It was a well-filled house that showered its final applause on the cast, orchestra and creative trio of Glass, Wilson and Childs. Is "Einstein" a long night? It seems that's a matter of relativity.

Lawrence B. Johnson is a cultural writer and critic. lawrencebj@gmail.com.