Vancouver troupe illuminates scientist’s life with expanded show

By John Threlfall, Monday Magazine Victoria

Over the course of some 20 years of theatre reviewing, there are some shows I regret seeing (the dreadful Rent springs to mind) and others I’m sorry I didn’t witness. Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla solidly tumbles into the latter category. Two years ago I foolishly passed on an opportunity to see Brilliant! on the East Coast. Granted, this isn’t the same show: a five-member chorus has been added for this production to great effect and the creators have tinkered with the script and length considerably since its 1996 Fringe debut.

But never mind the past. Making its debut in Victoria, this show in its current incarnation makes good on its bold title. Brilliant! illuminates the life of Croat-American inventor Nikola Tesla, who has been all but forgotten in the annals of popular history, while his contemporary, one-time employer and rival, Thomas Edison, is still revered today.

If one is to believe the play, Edison was a great pitchman and a superb businessman, but as an inventor, he never had a good idea that he didn’t steal. The hapless victim in all this is our hero Tesla, an immigrant eccentric, visionary, dreamer in numbers and lover of pigeons. As a businessman, though, Tesla was a bust. This was a man who pioneered AC (alternating current) power, as well as an early X-ray machine and wireless communications, developed robotics and remote control systems and foresaw a prototype of the internet decades before any of us had even heard of logging on. Yet, despite fame and some fortune during his lifetime, Tesla died in poverty in 1943.

Co-creator Jonathan Young portrays Tesla, as he has done since the show’s debut. Decked out in a black top hat, coat, slicked hair and drooping moustache, Young brings considerable energy and magic to the conflicted scientist and inventor. It’s a terrifically physical performance too.

The scenes with Edison (ably played by Anthony E. Ingram) were especially engaging as the rivals battled for scientific superiority. In one scene, they even duelled in dance: Edison clattering out a tap routine in an attempt to prove the superiority of his DC (direct current) power while Tesla pounded out a Slavic folk dance, winning the day with his alternating current that we still use today.

What was most impressive, though, was the breathtaking projection and lighting design of Jamie Nesbitt and Adrian Muir, respectively. While the stage was left virtually bare, Nesbitt’s magical projections filled up a two-storey scrim with mathematical equations, diagrams and schematics, reflecting Tesla’s fevered brain. In the play’s most memorable sequence, Tesla conducted his experiments as if on a silent-film reel: lights flickered as actors mimed exaggerated, quick-time jerky movements. The scene went on a tad long, albeit the only time that the one-act, 80-minute play dragged even slightly. The only other slight problem was that some of Tesla’s weightier concepts, left undeveloped by the writers, surely flew over the unscientific heads of much of the audience, as they did mine.

On a positive note, where props could have been used, director Kim Collier chose to use actors, who morphed into everything from an X-ray machine to a life-sized pigeon. By doing this, the creators reinforced that the borders between man, machine and animals are blurred in Tesla`s world. Tesla’s mistress was science and his great love a pigeon, while his fellow humans provided little more than a disappointing distraction.

Brilliant! is an outstanding night of theatre full of conspiracy theories, light, magic and thunderingly good performances. Don’t miss it like I did first time around.