Once again, a play of substance by Mark St. Germain, so at home at Florida Studio Theater! Relativity is about scientist Albert Einstein and a daughter he fathered who seems to have long disappeared from history. Exploring his past and character, St. Germain’s play tries to uncover how these illuminate who Einstein was in relation to the present. This would, of course, also explain a lot of history, even of science. Ginger Lee McDemott’s likeable, efficient Margaret Harding encounters Einstein on his way to his Princeton home and persuades him to give her an interview for a Jewish paper. Though not well received by Helen Dukas, Einstein’s housekeeper-plus (forcefully played by Sally Bondi), Margaret proceeds to show Einstein she has well researched his career and personal past, including his relationships with his sons. Margaret’s questions about Einstein’s daughter, conceived before his first marriage to Mileva Maric, become central to the interview and the play. Why, especially, did he give up his daughter? Was he like other geniuses who did public good but in their private life sacrificed people? Could he have avoided responsibility so as to devote himself to scientific pursuit? “Utility trumps morality,” Robert Zukerman’s distinctive, imperative Einstein insists. He was a pacifist yet, when he thought Nazi Germans were developing an atomic bomb, he urged Franklin D. Roosevelt to beat them to it. He preferred isolation to socialization yet donated much to socially admirable causes. With only weak links to his sons, the Einstein of Relativity becomes very excited about Margaret Harding’s boy, a genius, especially in mathematics and physics. There may well be at least one thing, but perhaps a lot, to learn in seeing Relativity but it could not be less dryly obtained than from FST’s three excellent actors under the unerring direction of Jason Cannon. They are as entertaining as informative. The set and all technical facets of the production create Einstein’s U.S. ambiance, all just right for what goes on in it, when, and by whom. Relativity is a play good for repeat attendance. I venture to bet, after seeing it at FST, many people search the web for facts about Einstein and his relationships with others in and outside of his career. I know I was so-moved.
