Presented by The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation at Ensemble Studio Theatre, 549 W. 52 St., NYC, April 9-29.
"Neutrons are like clumsy ghosts," muses physicist and self-described chief bomb putter-together, Louis Slotin, as he prepares to die from the effects of radiation poisoning after a Criticality Test in his Los Alamos lab goes very wrong.
These neutron ghosts, he explains from his hospital bedside, are ones that eat away at a person's insides. And with an accidental slip of the hand, Slotin has released a burst of them, enough so that he knows he will be dead in a matter of weeks, possibly days, and enough so that the onlookers in the lab may also have been affected.
And so, Slotin becomes a ghostly figure as he leads the audience through the question of why the accident occurred in Paul Mullin's new play (based on real events), "Louis Slotin Sonata," at The Ensemble Studio Theatre. The play apparently features a structure based on classical music's sonata allegro form, with the moment of the accident repeating (the lines and characters remain essentially the same, although the tone and delivery of each is altered).
Slotin, existing "out-of-time," though the actual events occurred in 1946, is visited by apparitions, from the ghost of his lab assistant, who died in a similar accident nine months earlier, to the figures of Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, and Josef Mengele (all of whom would still have been alive in 1946) to Jesus Christ (nattily attired in a brown pinstriped suit).
The piece is well-served by designers Rachel Hauck (sets), Greg MacPherson (lighting), Amela Baksic (costumes), and Rob Gould (sound), who capture both the realistic and fantastic aspects of the play.
Although occasionally muddled in its presentation of its multiple characters, the piece is both interesting and affecting as it offers meditations on creativity, science, experimentation, and fate in a well-directed (by David P. Moore) and engagingly acted (by a sure-handed ensemble of eight: Allyn Burrows, Bill Cwikowski, Richmond Hoxie, Ezra Knight, Matthew Lawler, Amy Love, Joel Rooks, William Salyers) new theatre piece.